VSP: Final Project (Stop Motion)

Ayshan Mohamed (0346212)
Video & Sound Production / Bachelor in Design (Honours) in Creative Media
VSP: Final Project (Stop Motion)

---

INSTRUCTIONS

---

LECTURE

In week 1, Mr. Martin asked us to watch and select three Zach King videos and three stop motion shorts and then explain why we chose them.

Zach King videos:

1. Most Realistic Painting Ever

This video had fantastic art direction where the subject in an artwork in a painting steps out of frame, takes flowers from another painting and enters a third painting with another subject. Everything came together so well and all transitions and editing were smooth and convincing.

2. Stealing the Eiffel Tower

This one was really short but interesting; a tourist in France stands with the Eiffel Tower in the background. He reaches forward and grabs the Eiffel Tower but after the transition, there was a tiny souvenir of the Eiffel Tower in his hand, and the actual tower in the background disappeared. 

3. Train Jumping in Hong Kong

I imagine this one was a little more complicated to achieve as they were recording on a moving train. They "ran through" the doors from inside the moving train to outside, and it was exhilarating to watch and well-presented.

Stop motion videos:

1. Fresh Guacamole by PES | Oscar Nominated Short
This stop motion imitates cooking shows and more specifically is about making guacamole. Except the ingredients are not real food and changes into other objects when they are chopped or sliced, etc. and I found that to be very creative. Nothing looked odd or out of place, and it's just a well-made production.

2. 2Pac Stop Motion Tribute
Rémi Brissaud produced this stop motion as a tribute to 2Pac using his song "Changes". I can't point out what I like specifically about this because everything about it was top-notch.

3. Stop Motion Animation Save Trees
The irony in this production was what caught my attention: it's about saving trees and using less paper, and yet the entire stop-motion was created using paper. And if there's one thing we know about paper stop motions, it's that A LOT of paper is used!

---

FINAL PROJECT

We had the option to choose to do either a stop motion video or a special effects video, and the thought of doing a stop motion was far more appealing for me. I got so excited I spent so much time brainstorming on this, and this is the proposal I prepared:

And then on Procreate, I drew out everything I needed to print and cut out:

Fig 1.01: Drawings on Procreate

Fig 1.02: Drawings on Procreate

It looks like a mess but trust me it made sense in my head. After I got them printed out, I spent hours cutting everything out and then arranged everything in sections according to the storyboard.

Fig 1.03: Drawings cut out

Fig 1.04: Shot behind-the scene

Fig 1.05: Shot behind-the-scene

I didn't want to add speech dialogue so instead I carefully went through a bunch of songs on YouTube and found the right one for my video. I decided to go with one that feels a sort of trance. 

[FREE] Experimental / Psychedelic Hip Hop Type Beat | "Psyching" by Yippie The Producer 

Fig 1.06: Shots of the film (1)

Fig 1.07: Shots of the film (2)

I used my TV and an LED sunset lamp for the lighting just to make it a little funky, besides that there's actually very little visual editing.

Final product:

Outlandish: A Stop-Motion Project | Soundtrack by Yippie The Producer

---

REFLECTION
This is by-far my favourite project I've done since I joined Taylor's. The amount of creative freedom and feeling of accomplishment after it all came together was very rewarding. I put in a lot of effort into this and I'm very pleased with how it looked at the end.