Evaluation

I thought this project was quite good but because i have been doing stop motion videos for so long now it didn't hold my interest that well but i researched the artists that interested me such as the video "dot" my stop motion video took a long time shooting and i'm a little worried about the shutter on my camera because of it. but i thought that this unit was good and was quite fun. if i did this unit again i would probbably add abit more research to it and write it more in depth.

My Final Piece

My Intro

My theme for every video that i have ever done is to create an after effects intro this can be simple or complicated.
for this i got stock video's from video-copilot. of flour blowing around. then i brought them into after effects and put them one above the other. and changed the top ones blending mode to add.
this means the video's alpha channels are removed so the area's that are black on the video are removed.

then i went to effect>color correction>curves which brought up the curves options for that image and changed the red green and blue values till it resembled an orange fire type look. for the video underneath i changed its values to a blueish color which i think works well together.

then i added text. a chose a simple Tom Raworth Stop Motion title

Then i wanted to make it so the text fades in. so i selected both the pieces of text and clicked the little arrow next to them this created a drop down menu. under transform there is opacity i went on the timeline where i wanted my text to be invisible till it starts fading in and clicked the little stop watch. then i went on the timeline to where i wanted the text fully visable and turned the opacity back to 100% this creates an automatic keyframe and the text will fade in inbetween those two keyframes.

Creating my stop motion.

First i brought my images into final cut and went to sequence>nest items

shown here its greyed out because i have already nested these items and have nothing selected. this brings all the items in the timeline into one block so you can edit them all without having to do it one by one. 

Then i right clicked on my timeline and selected speed. this enables you to change the speed of the footage you are wanting to edit. since this is a stop motion and the frames are played one per second i had to turn the framerate up alot more.

Now my footage is playing at a good framerate and is quite smooth. i can choose to color correct it this is where i can change the midpoints shadows and highlights of the video. it can create a mood or set a scene. with this stop motion video i used the three point color corrector and turned the blacks right down to create a silhouette i think this creates a very interesting feel to it.  

I then wanted to add a simple bit of background sound to it to make it seem more interesting. for this i decided i would use rain. i have a folder of stock sounds which had a rain sound in it so i imported this to my sequence. 

this is the rain sound that i imported i wanted to make it quieter so i double clicked the sound file and turned the decibels down to -7

Then i wanted to add in so the video and the sounds fade at the end this means that it doesnt just end abruptly and is just in general nicer to watch. so for this i right clicked the end of my timeline cross fade is the option i wanted. this adds a slow fade to the end of my piece 

 

Creating my Stop Motion

I shot my stop motion with a nikon d50 walking around my village shooting photo's in burst mode. this created a series of images that i could then turn into my stop motion. I also had two different choices. i was worried about shooting so many photo's because i didn't want to wear the shutter out on my camera and i could see in some images that the pixels were getting very warm and showing up red.

My Stop Motion Videos

These are the two stop motion videos i have made one was made in the studio and the other was made outside.
the studio one was shot under studio conditions using soft boxes and diffusers to create the atmosphere. we used cloth stones and a flower to create the video this was then brought into final cut and edited

Equipment i will use for this project.
Nikon D50 (Burst mode on manual to keep the settings constant so there is no difference in exposure)
Speedlight if needed
50mm 1.8 lens
Reflectors if needed