FMP III
Production
Due to the nature of Stop-motion animation, the Production for this film was by far the longest part of the project.
Test Shots
Filming for Power In The Machine took place over the span of 1 month, from late April to early June.
Anticipating the huge length of the Production, I actually began animating scenes before I had finished the script. The 1st scenes animated were basic test shots to see if there were any problems with the camera. These tests turned out to be a good idea, as the first test shots had a problem with the focus of the camera lens.
The shot would always start in focus, but the focus would then slowly change each time I took another shot. This would result in a scene starting in focus, but ending completely blurred. Fortunately, I went into the camera settings and found a fix to this problem, meaning no future shots would be effected.
Once I had spent a few days smoothing out any problems with the technical side of the production, I began animating the first scenes to go in the film. At this point, the full story still wasn't completely realised, so I started with some simple shots that could go anywhere in the story. These included shots of the Car driving alone through the desert, the convoy leaving the city and the Passenger entering the Car. Many of these early shots ended up in the final film despite being made before the full script was ready.
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Once I finally had the full story written down, Production was now going at full speed. Nearly every day I was free at home, I would go into the studio and animate more scenes.
The entire film was animated in completely the wrong order, starting with the middle act of the film. This was a very deliberate choice, as I wanted the opening and final act of the film to be the most well animated, which would be achieved through the experience of making the middle act first. The opening had to be good enough to impress the audience early on to keep them engaged, and the ending had to be good enough to make the whole thing feel worth it and end on a high note.
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After animating for the day, I would take out the SD Card from the camera and put all the individual photos onto the computer. From there, I would combine all the photos into video files so they could be easily added into the full film timeline, otherwise the timeline would be having to render thousands of individual pictures at once which would cause great lag and would be hard to manage. Instead, the final film timeline consisted of a few hundred short video clips, which was much easier to manage.
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To keep track of what to animate on the day, I made myself a shot list that I could tick off from my phone. There was 1 shot list made for each act, counting roughly 50-70 total shots each. These freed me up to worry less about planning what to film and instead just getting on with it.
Once the shot-list was completed, I combined all the clips together into the timeline, watched all the clips together and noted down any clips that were missing or could be added.
Problems Faced
Shaky Footage
The first problem faced before I even began animating was something I've had to experience on all of my previous stop motion projects, camera wobble.
The way my camera takes pictures is by simply pressing a large button on the top of the body. However, pressing the button will always cause the camera to move a small amount due to the pressure of pushing down on it.
For all my previous projects, I instead used a alternate way of taking pictures which causes less wobble. The touch screen of the camera has a feature which allows it to take pictures by merely lightly tapping it, allowing you to take photos without causing the camera to wobble. However, this wasn't a flawless method to get smooth scenes, as tapping the screen only slightly too hard would cause the camera to wobble, which would inevitably happen after taking over 500 pictures over a few hours, leading to the final footage appearing shaky and inconstant.
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Before I began animating this project, I wanted to see if I could operate the camera without having to physically touch it, significantly reducing any camera shake.
As my camera has bluetooth compatibility, I began looking into bluetooth remotes which would work with my camera.
I then made a great discovery, there is a free app by Canon which allows you to connect to the camera using your phone and control various functions with Bluetooth, including the capture button. This ended up being a game changer for the production of this project, as I could now take pictures with the camera without any worry of the camera wobbling or moving, and I had access to the app instantly and didn't have to purchase and wait for a remote to come through.
Short Battery Life
Another problem I had faced on previous stop motion projects was the short battery life of my camera. At full charge, the camera can take no more than 500 pictures before running out of charge. My original plan was to take as many pictures as possible until the battery died, then charge the camera whilst I take the SD Card out and edit all the footage together. However, this is a very inefficient and slow process, as the camera would still be charging after all the photos had been edited together into videos, leading to me just waiting for it to charge up.
As I knew how much film I needed to animate, and how my patience would be getting pushed to it's limits with how time consuming stop-motion is, I wouldn't get the film finished this way.
This was when my Dad recommended buying a second battery and a battery charger, so I could charge one battery and use the other to continue animating.
After purchasing a charger and spare battery that matched the specs of the Canon one online, they became a vital part in getting the film finished on time. Now, instead of having to leave the studio every few hours to wait for the battery to charge, I could instead stay in the studio for as long as I wanted, easily swapping the batteries around in under 30 seconds. This led to me getting through over 1,200 pictures in 1 go, something unthinkable without the new battery set up.
Unfilmable Ending
The first scenes animated for this project were in the 2nd act, then the 1st act and ending with the 3rd act. This was so the 3rd act would be the most well animated, as it would be the culmination off all the animation tips I've learned from the project. However, one aspect of making the final act I underestimated was the amount of time the previous 2 would take up. By the time it came to animating the final act, I had a very short amount of time to actually finish the scene, which consisted of a great amount of stunts and action that would take a lot of planning and animating to pull off.
It was at this moment I decided to re-write the ending scene, cutting out much of the action and re-organising certain scenes to make filming easier and quicker.
The original ending consisted of the Car racing through the armada of vehicles, racing away from the Heli car. This was changed to be a single duel between the Car and the Heli, now ending with the Car escaping through the convoy.
Original Ending Plan
Camera Techniques
Explosion Effect
To create the explosion effect at the end of the film, I wanted to have a blinding light emerge from behind the Car, an effect that I last used in my YouTube video In The Wasteland.
Unfortunately, none of the light sources in the room were bright enough to recreate the effect, so I had to bring up my dad's car light from the floor, which had very bright lights.
Despite the great brightness of the lights, they were still unable to overexpose the camera such as In The Wasteland, due to the brightness of the overhead lighting. Because of this, the shot was changed to show the explosion from the side of the characters as opposed to right behind them, as showing the light head-on would reveal the shot to be merely a big light instead of an actual explosion.
Boot opening
Inspired by a scene from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) involving 2 characters opening a car boot, with the camera actually inside the boot, showing the characters raising the boot lid.
This shot was relatively simple to achieve, making use of a small brick built set-up to hinge the boot piece and hold the camera at the right angle.
The main problem with this shot was that moving the boot lid upwards caused the pieces to come apart due to how it was built, so I animated the whole shot in reverse as the boot lid could be moved downwards without problems.
The shot ended up looking very nice, the only problem with the shot being that the boot hinges in a way that the real model can't, with it sat facing downwards at a 90 degree angle, the real Car's boot sits horizontal to the horizon. This is a continuity error that couldn't be avoided due to the height of the set could allow for the camera to face as high as it needed for the boot to open in an accurate way.
Interior Shots
Throughout the film, there were many shots that needed to capture the reactions of the characters in their vehicles. These shots, mostly focusing on the 2 protagonists, were done in multiple different ways depending on what actions had be conveyed and what characters to focus on. One of the main things I disliked from my previous stop motion film, In The Wasteland, the interior shots of the characters were clearly done with the car parked still, despite the fact its in the middle of a car chase. This is something I didn't want to repeat for this film.
Most shots of the Driver and Passenger in the Car consisted of building a rig on wheels for the camera to sit on, and connecting it to the car so it would follow the car at the exact right speed. These shots worked decently well, although there was a lot of camera shake due to how close the camera was to to the subjects, highlighting the height differences in the studs of the baseplate.
This is why other shots were done with the car studded to the ground, above the horizon to hide the fact that the ground's not moving. These shots ended up much smoother looking.
Vehicle Closeups
For most of the action in this film, I wanted the camera to get up close to the action instead of watching from afar. The most effective way to get up close to the action I found was by attaching the camera straight to the vehicle that it would be focusing on. This meant I could animate the vehicle moving forward and not have to worry about keeping the camera the exact same distance away, as the camera would move the exact amount as the vehicle.
Animating most these shots is quite self explanatory, you simply move the vehicle 1 or 2 studs forward (depending on what speed it's going), take the photo and then repeat until you've ran out of space or you've make a mistake somehow.
The real challenge with these shots is getting the camera in the right place, as some shots require very precise and complicated rigs. The rigs need to get the camera in the right place, at the right angle, without creating shadows and be able to support the camera's weight without collapsing.