Trying out everything today with coloured acetates, b/white photo acetates (both tones), cut-out rabbits, speech bubbles, text boxes and crayons etc.
A whole lot to think about, firstly continuity of light if you're not shooting everything on the same day.
I started off yesterday afternoon, bright sunshine outside, took about 20 shots and then my brother turned up with his kids so I had to stop. I re-started this morning at around 9.30am - sadly it's not as sunny today so this may affect the lighting on the shots.
I began by laying down the first dark b/white photo background and the first sad rabbit
For this piece I took more than one shot of a single set-up - this way I will hopefully have enough photos for 30 seconds worth of film.
Speech bubbles were added next (still against the dark b/white photo background, as the mood at this point is still one of isolation.
One thing to take note of - do not have your hands in the shot - this can happen when you're taking photos automatically - or too quickly, after moving a cut-out, so that your fingers are in shot, as below! So always check the photos you've taken.
I had a couple in sequence like this, which means I'll have to delete them and the animation will look at little jerky at this point.
At this point the rabbit cut-out has changed - there's a smile on his face as he jumps down off the box - taking notice of what is being said/offered. I swapped in the middle tone b/white photo at this point.
By shot number 50 I'd swapped in the lightest tonal background photo (the tracing paper one) so that by the time I started to add in the colour acetates, the colour and lightened mood would show.
Obvious note: tripod legs are showing - will have to ask technician how I might improve this as I don't have a claw grip.
The two halves of the first coloured acetate layer are pushed in from the sides. This was far more tricky this time as the acetates moved the rabbit layer about a bit. I tried using tiny blobs of blu tac to keep things in place but still not easy.
By the time I wanted to add in another denser colour layer, I'd decided to drop it in from about. The trip legs cause a real problem when trying to slide in from the sides.
In the above photo you can see the coloured layer coming down from above. It's not necessarily ideal but... Maybe I'll just put the whole layer down instead of dropping it in frame by frame? You also get an annoying shimmering effect with all these acetate layers.
By shot number 94 all the coloured acetates were in place, more cut-outs were brought in as well as starting to introduce the wax and coloured crayons. By this stage it was really hard to move each piece about without disturbing other pieces and drove me quite nuts.....
It requires so much patience to make an animation in this way. If I blu tac the crayons to the acetate to keep them in place while I move the cut-outs, inveriably everything moves when I have to lift them off and move them again for the next shot.
I have no idea therefore how this experiment will turn out but it won't be that smooth, I know that!
By shot 137 I was taking the crayons out of shot ready for the text information boxes.
I had also, by this time, just about lost my temper with the whole thing. I need more space to work in and more professional help. It feels very amature and frustrating but we have to plug on. As I look through the photos I can see more with my fingers in shot! ahghgh!
I then took out all the speech bubbles and started to bring in the text boxes
These may need a border of some sort around them to make them stand out a bit more.
Again, it really wasn't easy to place these as the acetates kept moving about underneath them. I didn't want to use blu tac as it only made things worse before....
As you can see, the box is off centre and off kilter - will have to think of a better way for registration. I may also have to change the size of the text.
Note also that the text box fits in behind the rabbits....as you can still see the text itself. It's important that the information on screen is easily read, so if I put boxes around the edges I may need to move the rabbits behind, or, as mentioned before, put a tracing paper layer over the rabbits before adding the text boxes. Not sure how well it would stand out then.
When it came to the final box - the telephone number and website address, the text was indeed to big to fit the screen properly. This therefore needs to be reduced.
By this time, as you can see, I was competely fed up with the whole thing!
I'd removed the rabbits but the text could not be read unless I zoomed out more and then you could see the tripod legs and outside of paper shot. Not good. Still, this is a first full run trial using only about half the number of frames I will use for the finished piece. I've taken 170 odd shots for this one.
I also need to add organistion logos. It may be that I add a text box in Premier Pro to make it look a lot clearer, and readable, take the background completely out etc.
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