Monster Movie Productions

It’s been a while since we did any animations but today Monster was playing with the plasticine and decided to make a movie. He created two characters - a creature with very long arms and a man and decided his plot line would be the creature attacking the man.

We had some discussions about quality of his models which led to him working some more on improving them so that they were softer to work with, easier to move and better blended and put together. We also talked about lighting and location choosing an area against a blank wall which we also used to prop the figures against for part of the film. We drew the curtains to create a darker, more consistent lighting but opened them for the final three frames to create a light effect for drama, that chased the creature away.

This was the first time we had used a webcam to capture our stills instead of a digital camera which meant we were able to check our image on the laptop and line up previous frames on the screen as we went along which made the whole project easier. We also used some ‘off camera’ techniques such as holding the figures just out of shot and were able to work with a smaller area as our ’set’ and control things such as light far easier.

The following is dictated by Monster himself:

I learnt to always warm up the plasticine so you can use it better. I learnt how to key a surface to join plasticine together and to create joins using holes and dowels.

We agreed that the result was not his best work so far but getting to grips with the webcam and the rather unplanned nature of the project hampered us with that. I think the idea of better planning, some sort of script or plotline and using better figures were valuable lessons learnt that perhaps don’t completely translate into the finished project which can be seen here. 

Monster was quite taken with the idea of a film rather than an animation for his latest project. We looked at the idea of clips of video or still pictures linked together with a presenter - Monster. We started the film with some live footage of the chickens right now, shooting it in smallish chunks to be put together, then looked at what stills and video clips from the past we wanted to include and then filmed the specific links to be used inbetween them.

Monster had quite a big role in the editing of this film, looking through previous footage and selecting which pics and video clips he wanted and then watching them closely to decide what introductions each clip would require before having me film him making them. He did much of the clicking and dragging to put them in the right order himself. There is loads of things we’ve already identified as wanting to improve in future productions such as lighting, continuity and perhaps scripts rather than winging it when the camera is rolling I think we would also have benefitted from a story board approach to the whole thing. It’s hard to ascertain which part of the process Monster enjoys most but he does have a fairly limted patience with the length that a really good quality production would take so we tend to go with a ‘get it over quickly and see some results’ approach for now rather than stretching it out and him losing interest.

I have been researching film and animation making workshops, none of which seem to be catering for his young age group, but there are certainly resources out there for a couple of years time which is reassuring. He has sent off a consent form to participate in a CBBC project - Me and My Movie, which takes place in a couple of weeks, so fingers crossed for a positive response to him getting involved with that and getting a real taste for the whole behind the scenes behind the camera stuff.

Without further ado, here’s My Chickens

It’s been a while but the safe return of Monster’s lost camera inspired him to come up with an idea for a film. Whilst deciding what he wanted for breakfast he told me he wanted to make a film about toast. He wanted a shot of the toaster and one of the bread, one of it going in as bread and another with it coming out as toast, then a series of shots with the toast getting eaten shown by a diminishing pile of toast with bite marks.

This time I was far more hands off with suggestions about the film in the hopes that he would come up with ideas and then critique the finished product for himself, seeing where improvements could have been made. So he took all the photos, deciding when it was the right time to capture his next shot. I did suggest right at the very end that he took a few more pictures of individual bites missing from a piece of toast but this was to more ably demonstrate an idea he had already articulated and he was enthusiastic about the suggestion.

He then sat with me and dictated the credits, chose the colour and decided the length of each frame. Not an animation as such, more a series of stills but totally his own vision in the finished product.

We debated doing more but moved onto discussions about shadows and sillhouettes instead with a few ideas for future projects being tossed about.

So here is ‘The Toast Eater‘.
 

Yummy Bang

Yesterday we were watching Henry’s Cat which used to be a favourite cartoon of mine as a child. I did a quick google to see what sort of websites were out there with information about the cartoon and found the official Henry’s Cat site  which then linked to a fab website all about making animations with loads of great information. There was also a link to the blog of Stan Hayward, the man behind both sites and creator of Henry’s Cat.

This morning Monster (and Teeny) and I have been looking at the MakeMovies site and getting some great ideas about very basic animation using cartoons and drawings rather than our previous 3d models or real objects. Monster wanted to have a try at a couple of more basic ideas so he came up with a stick of dynamite and an explosion which you can see by following the ‘bang’ link above and a cut out pair of jaws or teeth with a face at the top to open and close the mouth which you can see by following the ‘yummy’ link.

 Although the windows movie maker is great for lots of twiddly bits and making professional looking movies from video clips it is not great for stills as I cannot work out how to shorten each frame to speed the animation up a bit so I found some free software called pic2vid which does a rather better job at that. It does insist on having audio which you can either record yourself by ringing them (and paying for the call!) or typing text in for them to transfer into male or female speech. It then seems to match the length of the clip to the length of the audio so on this occassion it worked quite well for our animations.

It does feel like a slight backward step when we’ve been making longer movies with more detail but I think starting at the very beginning with some real basics about movement, thinking more about every step and learning the craft from the basics is a good thing. Computer animation is just one small part of the science of film making and animation too and simple, hand drawn cartoons have a real beauty and art to them so I’d have hated to have bypassed this stage in favour of the more complicated plasticine and computer generated productions. 

Having discussed the idea of using audio in our next film we were very inspired by the fab clip that Bob linked to in the comments of the previous post of the flashing Christmas decorations on a house in time to music. Monster decided to make something out of geomags to animate and after some experimentation with a 3d upright robot which didn’t work we decided to use a flat character on the floor that could dance to music.

The figure built we got out the tripod and set the shot up and Monster did the moving of the figure and the taking pictures himself. We had much discussion about what music to use and eventually decided ‘I like to move it move it’ as used in the film Madagascar would be a good choice. We had originally aimed to actually dance in time to the music but realised how ambitious this was and just went with dancing. We decided to repeat our shots rather than keep taking pictures so the finished film is actually each shot used twice over.

As previously it was a huge learning curve with lots of lessons and ideas coming along as went. I think our next goal is going to be to look more at movement and work on perhaps producing a shorter clip with more detail and more thought and planning - maybe using storyboards or some of the techniques we’ve seen on ‘making of’ dvd extras and at the Pixar exhibition we went to at the Science Museum in London earlier this year where real people are filmed to capture the movements of the body etc. Another idea which has occured to me as I write is to maybe use my artists dummy for something as it would recreate perfect realistic movement and proportions.

We had various trials to get the music onto my computer and at one point decided to change the music but Teeny (Monster’s nearly 4 year old sister) tracked down a McDonalds toy with the music on it which we used. Finally we did our usual ‘making of’ movie. As well as being a bit of fun I am doing these to ensure Monster is thinking about and articulating what we are doing and what he is learning from it. This time we had far more outtakes than usable footage - the best of which made it to the end of the making of film and had us all giggling for ages.

So our next project is likely to be focussing more on quality than quantity and concentrating on some of the finer details. But for now, without further ado here is Move It Move It and The Making of Move It Move It for your viewing pleasure. Oh and thank you so much for all the comments, I am showing them all to Monster and he is getting a real kick out of knowing that his mates are watching his films and enjoying them.

Today’s project was to create a film showing changes happening off camera, we wanted to use something basic so we came up with the idea of a glass of water being emptied.

We filled a glass with water, but added some food colouring so the liquid would show up better. In order that we didn’t have to move the glass during filming we used a straw to drink the water between shots. This necessitated a tissue to rest the straw on when not in use (all important film making lessons - props!). This time we rested the camera on the floor so that Monster could both drink the water and take the shots.

I showed him a lot more of the editing and production process this time, I don’t think it will be long before he is able to do that bit himself actually. We are using windows movie maker which came already on my laptop and it is fine for what we need at the moment, very easy to use with plenty of effects and editing tools.

In watching the film back we chatted about what could be improved (I wanted Monster to pick up on things like needing a tripod to stop the picture from ‘wobbling’ between shots) and we discussed keeping the camera steadier and the light. In this film which we shot over probably ten minutes the sun has gone behind clouds a couple of times and the light changes lots with shadows being cast behind the glass on the wall. We talked about using artificial light to keep lighting levels the same or filming somewhere where natural light wouldn’t effect the filming. Finally we discussed the idea of audio on an animation. We talked about music or other sound effects being added and are planning on adding sound to his next production.

We then made a ‘making of’ film just like on all Monster’s favourite dvds, complete with an out-take where he stumbled over his name

The Invisible Drinker and The Making of The Invisible Drinker. 

This was Monster’s first go at creating a figure and making a movie with the figure moving. We discussed how to make the figure so it would be able to stand up (it didn’t you can see on the finished movie how it fell a couple of times and had to be re- stood up) and how to ensure the arm would be strong enough to be moved without falling off. He made it as a whole piece of plasticine rather than a body with affixed arms which made it more stable.

He designed and made the background. We learnt from the finished movie that in future backgrounds need to be brighter, deeper, more solid colours to show up and that smaller details do not show up as well as the bigger, bolder ones.

Monster moved the character between each shot and told me when to take each picture.

The finished movie can be viewed here.