# So... Anybody interested in Stop Motion?



## Dr. Von Goosewing (Aug 18, 2008)

I'm really into people like Jan vankmajer, Quay Brothers and so on, I'd love to get started in stop motion. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about photography/film making, so if anybody's got advice/experience in stop motion, please share! 

I suppose I'll need a camera with a decent amount of memory space & pretty high resolution for it to look good on a TV screen, and It'd be nice if it could do B&W/Sepia effects automatically as well. Is there some kind of image sequencing program I can use to piece it altogether?


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## playstopause (Aug 18, 2008)

I'm a filmmaker.

If you want to do the real deal, you need a 16mm Bolex camera, wich allows you to take one frame at a time. That's what the Quay Brothers used and many, many others until recently. That's what I learned filmmaking with, so i'm mopre familiar with the old-school approach... And that's what I prefer esthetically too.





... But, since everyone these days is getting into digital (), you can do it easily with just about any still or video camera. Just grab a video camera that has a "still" function on it. Then, put all of the frames after another in any editing software (Final Cut, for instance) and voilà! You can often add effects on cheap digital camera but with pro ones, you'd be better off adding color / visuals effects in editing, once you're done "cutting" the thing.

Basicelly, what you need to do is take a still frame, move whatever is in your frame a notch (say a character is raising a hand : you need to move it higher by a millimiter or som then take another still frame... on and on and on...). This is truly a job for the patient ones. The more precise / concise the way you move stuff in your shots between each frame, the more the action will be fluid in the end.

And you need to do it 24 times per second with film and 30 times per second in video.


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## Dr. Von Goosewing (Aug 18, 2008)

^Cool, thanks for your help. I fully agree on the choice of camera, it just looks "right", but a little expensive to dabble in what is more or less a whim at this stage. Still, if my enthusiasm grows that's a camera I can consider.

I'll start looking for a reasonable camera & probably use imovie to get things going for now (much to your despair I imagine!)

The ~25fps rule to create the illusion of motion is about the only animation rule I already knew. Can I ask why there is a subtle difference between film & video frame amounts?


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## playstopause (Aug 18, 2008)

Frame rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is goin' to explain it to you in a better way than I would (i'm mostly familiar with the french terms).

_Very _ roughly, it has to do with persistence of vision, wich is different from a mechanical devise (traditionnal film) to a electronic devise (digital).

Persistence of vision - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


- You could also rent a 16mm camera and do a test reel. Bolex are quite cheap to rent. I know I can rent one here for 15$ a day. With film processing (a 100ft of film can) and all could cost you all in all around 200$ for 2 minutes and a half of pure film / stop-motion experimentation.

- Otherwise, your best bet is to use a mini-DV camera and hook it into your computer and try to edit it in Imovie. I know Imovie is pretty basic so I don't know if you can do frame-by-frame cuts (wich are required to do stop-motion) but there is nothing to lose in trying. I think you'd be better off with Final Cut, wich is also quite easy to use. IMO.


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## Uber Mega (Sep 2, 2008)

I dig stop motion:







...i'd like to do more stuff with it!


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## Sentient (Sep 3, 2008)

^^ Very cool avatar. I thought of you as soon as I saw this thread. (I'd actually be curious to hear how long it took you to do that, and how you went about it, etc.)

I've always been a huge fan of stop-motion works. Everything from the old Rankin/Bass productions (Rudolph, etc), to the incredible work done in Ray Harryhausen's films (That 7 skeleton scene in "Jason and the Argonauts" still fascinates me to this day.) 

Tool's video for "Sober" is one of my very favorite examples. That incredible little piece of filmwork put to that music is just a little masterpiece, in my opinion.

I always wanted to give it a try, too, but never managed to obtain the equipment. Great posts above, by Playstopause, regarding how to go about it.


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## Tiger (Sep 4, 2008)

I'd do it if I knew I wouldnt just rip off Tool and Quay stuff, so I dont.


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## Uber Mega (Sep 4, 2008)

Sentient said:


> ^^ Very cool avatar. I thought of you as soon as I saw this thread. (I'd actually be curious to hear how long it took you to do that, and how you went about it, etc.)
> 
> I've always been a huge fan of stop-motion works. Everything from the old Rankin/Bass productions (Rudolph, etc), to the incredible work done in Ray Harryhausen's films (That 7 skeleton scene in "Jason and the Argonauts" still fascinates me to this day.)
> 
> ...



Cheers, it took about 10 minutes. I just set my cam up on a tri-pod and used my camera remote control to fire off a shot every time i shuffled forward a bit. I don't know how many frames there are, probably about 20, but yeah it was really easy to do!


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