THE ART OF STOP MOTION ANIMATION: SHOOTING YOUR OWN

SHOOTING YOUR OWN STOP MOTION ANIMATION

Due to the flood of e-mails I have received regarding this subject, I have decided to include a section on this site to answer as many of your questions as I possibly can. I hope to update this page with information on specific pieces of equipment and suppliers so you will know who to call and where you can get some of the items mentioned.

Nowadays, it is very difficult to find Super-8 cameras, especially ones with single frame shooting capability, which is necessary for Stop Motion Animation. Harder still is finding a lab that will process the film once you've shot it. If you have the money and a desire for quality, a 16mm camera would be the wise choice, but from the e-mails I've received, many of you cannot afford such equipment. I am constantly asked about video cameras and computers and how they can be used for animation.

If you have the money, an ingenious way would be to buy a digital still camera that records photos onto a magnetic disk of some sort. There are many models now that range in price from relatively inexpensive (a couple of hundred dollars) to very expensive (thousand of dollars). You could shoot your animation with one of these cameras, then transfer the frames to your computer and "splice" them together there. There are various programs out there that can be used to edit your frames. ADOBE PREMIERE and ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS are two such programs. There's also a piece of software specifically designed for this purpose. It's called STOP MOTION PRO, but I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet.

I have also received an e-mail from animator and programmer Larry Fagan regarding some software he created called MOTION SHOT. So far it's only available for the Mac platform. I haven't had the opportunity to use it, but it looks great.

If you don't have access to this software, there are utilities available on the internet for the Macintosh that allow you to edit video and make a sequence from a series of still images. The greatest advantage to using this method, is that some camera models allow you to save images at different resolutions, some as high as that of 35mm film (2k is the norm) or higher, whereas video is always low quality (640 x 480 @ 72 dpi). This is useful if you would like to have your animation recorded to film at a later time by a lab such as E-FILM. E-FILM specializes in recording digital images to 35mm film for the motion picture industry.

Another approach, entailing more time, money and equipment would be to shoot your animation using a video camera. Again, remember that your are working with NTSC video, the resolution of which is not very good to begin with.

If you are looking to buy a video camcorder, your best bet would be to look into the SONY line of Digital video cameras. A few of the models include a stop motion feature and have very good image quality as far as video goes. If you cannot afford to buy one, you might be able to rent one or borrow one from a friend.

If all you have is a plain old VHS camcorder without single frame capability, it is still possible to use it if you have access to the software I mentioned earlier and some additional hardware. The problem of course is that when you press the button on one of these cameras, it will shoot a burst of several frames, depending on how fast you are at the trigger. Even with flying erase heads for clean edits your results will not be smooth. What to do? Just shoot short bursts for each pose of your puppet(s) and deal with editing your sequence together somewhere else.

Once you've shot your animation bursts with your camcorder, you will need to edit single frames from your clips into one sequence. If you work at an editing facility or have access to one, you could input your video into an AVID and edit your video there, but I doubt that most of you would have access to such equipment. If you have a home computer (I only know Macs) and you have ADOBE PREMIERE or AFTER EFFECTS or some other type of editing software, then it's just a matter of getting your video into the computer and editing it together that way. Nowadays computers are including Audio and Video inputs, but I'm not too familiar with that. Once you edit your video together, then you can output it to tape again.

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