Final Edit

Here is the final version of my animation, please click on the Youtube video to watch in a bigger size.

Making The Animation

To edit and create my animation I used Sony Vegas, it's a very similar video editing suite to Adobe Premiere and allowed me to do all the same things. In most cases with film I find editing to be the most time consuming, in this case having all the images saved, edited and lined up in order made the process much easier. However as I wanted to give the animation a stuttered, trippy feel to it I did have edit right to every millisecond, to reverse shots and flash them on and off as well as keeping them in time to the beat of the music.

I also used a short video of a static television to act as a bridge between the narrative and the text in my animation. I felt having it flash up every now and then, added to the haunting and uncertain atmosphere of my animation.

Text Shoot

After a long line of problems trying to animate the text, I decided to scribble a small part of each line out in black pen (from the right to the left) until it would be a black line completely. When reversing the shots back, it would reveal the text from the scribbled line. This was a very lengthy process as I had to shoot from directly above the text.

I also decided to invert every image of the text, as my animation had a very dark feel to it, I thought it would be more effective, in keeping with the rest of my shots and unique to make each photograph negative, so the text and the scribbled ink would be white on a black background. To do this I created an action in Photoshop saved it, then used the batch process tool to apply the same action to every image. This saved me a lot of time as I left the programme running.

Text Ideas

We had to make sure the text in this project was not edited in after filming, instead we had to film the text and animate it ourselves, using stop motion. I wanted to feature every single line of the poem as my music didn't have any vocal on it and I wanted the poem to be able to read and followed easily, also acting like a bridge between the different narrative parts of my animation.

I also wanted to keep the animation looking professional, therefore I printed out every single line in black ink on white paper, in this font below...

The reason why I chose this font was because it has a very clean, defined style to it. Yet through it's narrow letter and small spacings it gives the words some more atmosphere and a more serious tone than say a font like Hevetica. 

Editing The Shoot

As I wanted to keep the same style of photography that I had done before, I had to edit every single image which would be featured in my animation. However to keep the majority of images from each scene the same I saved the settings I had used and loaded them on to every photo in Photoshop.

Shoot

Here are the hundreds of photos that I took for the animation.

Shoot Plan

For the shoot for the narrative part of my animation, I will use my sister. I'm going to capture it down in the same location as my 24/24 project at night, using a high exposure, a strong flash and in raw to give me the chance to edit the images to create a more bold and vibrant effect. I want to keep most of the shots fairly simple, in actually just mainly reaction. I will take the following....

• Walking away down the road, side long shot. (<----- where she walks down the road in the poem)
• Walking away low angle, close up of legs.
• Mid shot of arms waving above head and looking up to the sky. (<---- looking to the sky to show her the way)
• Close up reaction face shots.
• Long shot of her falling to her knees and holding her hands over her head.
• Shots standing over a mirror and crouching down to discovering her own warped reflection. (<---- sort of symbolic to the message in the poem of breaking away and leaving a life and yourself and wanting not to be followed)

Final Poem

In the end I decided to write my own poem, writing poetry isn't something which I've done in a long time but I think it tells the story that I wanted to tell and expresses the visual themes which I will be in my video.

The Last Light

I've been waiting for a while in what I'd hope was glory

For what turned out to be another twist in my story

I've been falling through the world on my last drop of hope

All out of luck and at the end of my rope

I just couldn't bare to stick around for day

So I look up to the  sky to show me the way

I cast a shadow in the last light of the burning sun

As I stand here on the brink of what's begun

Tonight I'm taking distance to the great beyond

Up above so high, am I about to lose my mind? 

I'm taking the road you'd swore you'd never walk down

So you couldn't follow me this time

Mixing The Music

In the end I decided to use the instrumental of Ellie Goulding's 'Lights' and mix it together with the intro which can be heard in my previous post about music. To get both tracks to mix into each other, I will have to transpose them both into the right key. As well as this, I plan on the animation lasting at a maximum length of around 2 minutes therefore I'm going to edit the track down so instead of it ending abruptly, I'll cut out a large chunk in the middle of the song so it can finish with it's original ending. To do all this I used a multi sequencer programme I downloaded called MixCraft.

Poem Ideas

I want my animation to tell the story of someone who has decided to walk away from their life, because things have got too much for them to take. Not necessarily because of anything that's particularly happened but because of the way they feel, the need to escape and the need to start fresh. I want the animation to be based in one location and for the poem to tell the story whilst the photography backs up the story being told and adapts it to a character.

Within the poems I researched most of the ones which were best suited to my ideas dealt with death and I didn't want to bring death as a theme into my animation, I wanted to add some ambiguity to it and most poems I read were quite literal in what they were saying.

I did also take some of the lyrics in one of the songs that I have considered using...

Every time you fall
And every time you try
Every foolish dream
And every compromise
Every word you spoke
And everything you said
Everything you left me, rambles in my head

There's nothing I can say
There's nothing I can do now
There's nothing I can say
There's nothing I can do now

And everything you loved
And every time you try
Everybody's watching
Everybody cries

Although I've not finished researching into a text I can use, I may also consider writing my own poem so I have complete control over making sure everything fits together and makes sense.

Music

One of the first things which I want to consider in my animation was the choice of music. As I already have a visual idea of what I want my animation to look like, dark and haunting.

I will edit the music and possibly mix it for my animation possibly with the start of this track, I think it's very moving espeically with the distorted speech from the film It's A Wonderful Life over the top, I think it could work really well and it gives me a very strong idea on the theme of my poem.

Research Into Animation

I first thought about mixing actual video film footage with animation in my work, but after the first shoot I did for this project I decided it could work well just being a stop motion animation on it's own, this way I'm not overcomplicating it for myself and I can explore animation to a fuller extent as animation is something I've never really done before.

Here are some examples of existing stop motion animations which I really like and can take inspiration from.

Two things I really like about this animation firstly is the way real people are used towards the end of the clip. I think by animating people so their actions almost look surreal, the fast pace of the animation really works well it manages to hold onto your attention. The second thing I really like with this animation is the music, it fits perfectly and is just as effective as the actual image in creating atmosphere and telling the biographic story of the video.

I really like the way the chalk smudges out as each drawing is drawn. It could be an interesting way of revealing of the text in my poem. 

This animation is fascinating, the way it tells a message and the way it brings such 2D images to life and the way it progresses throughout. It's got a very dramatic and haunting atmosphere to it, through the use of the music. One thing in particular I like about this one, is the ending and the way it sort of slows down and ends almost unfinished.

First Ideas

For this project, my first idea would be to do something with a darker tone to it as most poems seem to deal with people's struggles. I already have ideas for the music and looking back at some recent work I have done, particularly a 24/24 project I feel like it's unfinished, I found a style with the photography in that project which I think could progress into this project. Here are some of the images from that project which I will be using as inspiration. As you can see most of them are quite dramatic in terms of colour, all of them have taken at night and manipulated to an extent to give them eerie, haunting feel.