bunnies <3 robots

so this weekend i tried my hand stopping motion to accompany kevin & i's FIRST transatlantic musical collaboration.

the following combines two super cool gifts given to me for my birthday this year by my family: 1) a zoom recording device which kevin and my parents got me and 2) a dymaxion airocean world map which bobby and stephanie found for me to temporarily satiate my cartographic obsession.


bunnies <3 robots from Katian Witchger on Vimeo.

the song
kev and i made this cover of daniel johnston's true love will find you in the end (hear original here) using indabamusic.com a site which supposedly allows you to upload and mix music online. sounds great right? well it could be im not sure we didnt exactly get it to work right. i, without thinking, uploaded my vocal and ukulele parts as one pre-mixed track (which i recorded in garage band via the zoom h2 recorder) and when kev went to mix in his parts he couldnt (as id balanced them wrong to cover up my inability to sing) so... i re-exported separate tracks and emailed them to him as mp3s which he then edited on his computer using protools. i was really really happy the day kev sent the mix; it was like magic to have his parts added. i know its not perfect but i think it sounds lovely.

the video
at 1:38 seconds this is the longest stop motion i will EVER attempt by myself. it is really messy and hard to follow in parts but i like how it turned out overall. for no other reason this was worth it for the better understanding of time i have gained... there was sort of a story, at least characters but it got a little muddled when i switched from 15 frames per second to 10 frames per second outputs.... originally i had planned everything by the frame to sync to the lyrics and piano on the basis of a rate of 15 frames per second. (some of the stuff right at the beginning is at a faster frame rate but overall it was too aggressive and didnt match the mood of the song) i have two 1 GB memory cards for my camera (kevins old canon rebel) and at medium size they hold just under 500 photos. i shot both cards and was, i thought, about half way done. i uploaded the photos and when i saw how fast it moved i had a play around and reduced the frame rate. i think it works better but i had to rejig 'the story' halfway through so as not to waste precious pictures.


basic process/time:
the song (30 minutes): i like this song so i learned it and happened to just have joined indaba because kevin had so i recorded it to see how the site worked.

1. the concept (2 minutes): there were two main catalysts for this 'concept' 1) i find a lot of crap around (read: on the street) most of which ends up organized in small boxes in my room. occasionally i need one of these small boxes and all the little bits get dumped in piles on my floor. 2) when we moved into our house in nunhead i bought some ancient blue tack from the corner shop down the street and since then, a constant, but rotating, 1/3 of the things on my walls are on the floor. the day i decided to try a stop motion for our song both a pile of small action figures and one of my maps were on the floor.... that'll do.
2. the story board (2 hours): i did a second by second story board and noted the lyrics or piano parts underneath each frame- which turned out to be a bit excessive; i only filled in every 3-4 but it was still helpful to see them all laid out)
3. the stops(5 hours): i then shot approx 1300 photos using my canon rebel on medium size setting
4. the motion (over night, 10 minutes): i imported all the photos into iphoto and opened using the 'open image sequence' function in quicktime pro, i used a 10 frames per second rate and saved the project in 3 files (each a memory card's worth of photos)
5. the edit (2 hours): i imported the 3 files and the mp3 from indaba into final cut and put it all together.


things i will do differently next time:
-FIND SOMEONE ELSE equally interested in hours of tedious minutiae to endure the production with me; kev ive got big plans for xmas break! i think even having someone else to move the figures would help dramatically with both how long it takes and the panning. (trying to move things then go back to the exact point in space only slightly to the left and frame the camera the same way is not really possible. i think having another person and holding your breath may be enough to fake it anyway.)
-lighting, i started playing around with the lighting during the 'step out into the light' bit and i wish id thought about it from the beginning... think i will do more light tricks and try to do a proper vertigo zoom pull (zooming in while panning out or vice versa) thing on the next go


time: approx 9 1/2 hours over 3 days

level of difficulty sawzalls rating: 4 out of 5

cost: no new costs on this project

witch-gear:
canon rebel, tripod
zoom h2
imac w/ garageband, iphoto, quicktime pro and final cut
stickers from stephanie <3>