I took a different approach to character development. In this 34 second video, you don’t physically see the character. Instead, you see the result of the character’s actions. He’s having a nice college dinner. The video begins with clearing off the desk he was doing homework on, then setting up for dinner. The storyboard of the video shows the result of the character eating and drinking the food on the table. When it is all done, the napkins flip over to reveal “THE END” of the video.
There are a total of 208 images this 34-second video. Each picture lasts about 0.2 of a second. I wanted to take many photos for the sole purpose of creating a stop motion that seemed fluid enough to easily follow. My idea was each time I moved an object, I would only move it a small distance before taking another photo for fluidity. I also wanted to make each frame short enough to keep the viewer’s attention. The viewer has to keep scanning around the video to keep up with the pace of the frame progressions. For example, you see the coffee fill up on the left side of the screen just prior to the sour cream being dotted on the pizza on the right side of the video. I was sure to keep the aperture locked on my iPhone so that the lighting didn’t change. I was also careful to make sure that I shot the video at night, without the interference of the shadows from natural daylight. In all, I met my expectations for my very first stop-motion video. So much fun!
Unlike a regular still photo, a stop-motion video (even only 30 seconds long) illustrates a series of events over a given time period. The viewer can familiarize with the setting and connect with the experience the character is going through. It tends to be more emotionally captivating. Because there is movement, the viewer isn’t able to look all around the frame like they can with a still image. Therefore, because of the inherent nature of this type of art, the creator has a lot more control over the motion of the viewer’s eyes. In this particular video, the character is given 208 frames to illustrate his identity. He can steer the viewer in whichever direction he chooses because eyes follow motion. In this case, it’s something as simple as preparing and eating dinner on a school night.
Lastly, I purposely chose an upbeat tempo for the audio because college students are constantly scrambling around to get schoolwork done. Therefore, making time for a meal may take the backseat.