Editing Stop Motion

I had all my shooting complete. I then started to put them together. I started by putting all the photos in final cut pro. I did one layer with the person stop motion and put them in order, i then changed the duration to around 0.2 seconds on each photo. I added a new layer and did the same with the backgrounds. I played around with the duration, I also repeated some of the shots in places to balance out timings with the backgrounds.

I then added sound, I chose Tall Ships tracks for 2 of the stop motions, their very fast and upbeat and match the stop motions really well. I used Penguin Cafe Orchestra for one also.

I then had to play around with the sizes and sort out the endings of the films, they ended really abruptly in sound and visuals. I exported the movs and imported them into After Effects to place into the correct size. I had some problems with Jays stop motion, the flowers were so built up they had gone of the side of the camera so I added 2 white blocks either side. At first I made a fuzzy edge in Photoshop but I don't think it suited the feel and preferred just a plain white, I added a white block behind the other 2 too.



I played around with the colour in After Effects too, they now look a lot brighter and 'fun'



I then faded the films (and audio) out to white and will place Marie's butterfly Meadowlands ending on the ends...

Shooting Stop Motion...... Part two.

So, I had finished all of the first part of shooting. Then came the hard part! The stop motion on walls!

I made lots of little props that I would be moving around on a wall. I made them out of felt, paper, card, tin foil, you name it! I made things like clouds, lightening, sunshine, MEADOWLANDS words, flowers and even rain.

I moved my whole living room around so I had enough space to shoot. I then slowly started acting out a scene on the wall with my props. Using blue tack, moving a cloud along a little, taking a pictures, and repeated until I had finished the whole story! The rain took the longest and was really tedious, moving each rain drop one at a time is not fun!









I did 2 different stop motions, one for the stop motion with 3 people in and one for the stop motions with one person in.

Shooting stop motion.... Part one.

I have decided to shoot my stop motions in two parts, part one will be shooting the actual people and then I will shoot the stop motion backgrounds separately. This will make shooting the people a lot easier! It won't take such a long time which means the shoot will run smoother. To do this I will need to shoot the people with plain backgrounds which will be deleted, to make this work I need to make a make-shift green-screen.

I bought some very bright orange fabric which can be hung behind the people, I was originally going to shoot on plain white backgrounds but decided I would get white highlights on faces etc which would cause a problem...

The first shoot I did was with 3 guys sitting on a sofa...

I lit the backdrop with lamps...

I then got the guys to keep swapping hats whilst I was taking photographs...

I then introduced sunglasses and kept swapping them...
and then gradually flowers until they built up all over them...
The whole idea of the film is to start gloomy and rainy with glum faces, then as the birds and flowers start to appear its all about how fun Meadowlands is!

The shoot took quite a long time, it actually took longer setting it all up than actually taking the photos, I made sure everything was ready to for when I started so the boys didn't move around a lot.

I had the same appraoch with my other 2 shoots.... I did one with Lolly and another with Jay.

I wanted to have a variety of people shown in the films. I am so glad I have finished the filming of the people for stop motions! I am sick of carrying round a shopping trolley full of fake flowers, birds, hats and sunglasses!

I then had to start on deleting all the orange backgrounds in the photographs. I did this using colour range in photoshop and using actions....

I did each set separately until I had transparent backgrounds.

I started with the normal photo...
Started to record an action. I then opened colour range and selected a part of the orange...
I had to turn the 'fuzziness' right down so it wouldn't pick up anything I didn't want it to, like oranges in the flowers or birds.Then hit delete! I did this a few times and then stopped recording.


I then ran a batch on the folder full of the images with orange backgrounds so I didn't have to repeat the process hundreds of times!
I had to run several actions as it still didn't pick up of all of the orange...

I then had to go through the pictures individually and erase smaller blemishes, for example in the photo below, the tape that was holding the fabric up was in shot!

This was probably the most time consuming bit of work I have ever done! Especially for 3 separate films! It took such a long time, even though colour range tool is good, I had to run so many actions to make it work with so many bright coloured flowers in shot too. EVENTUALLY i ended up with all shots of all sets with transparent backgrounds!

After a VERY long time on Photoshop and hundreds of folders of thousands of pictures, they are done!