Production: Sound

Sourcing the Sound Effects and Non-Diegetic Music

Diegetic and non-diegetic sound was included in my storyboard, so I had to source both sound effects and background music for my animation. Though I began looking for single soundtracks to layer over my entire animation, I found that smaller sections of several pieces of music worked best to capture the atmosphere and mood of my stop motion.

I used Incompetech to source my non-diegetic music, as it had a wide range of works available to me, and were separated into categories of mood (e.g. suspense, wonder) which proved helpful in directing me towards what I was looking for. The pieces of music I decided on were all licensed under Creative Commons, meaning I, as a creator, could use the music provided I give appropriate attribution to the composer.

Finding sound effects was more difficult for me, as I had never out-sourced them before. After looking through several different websites to see what sounds they had relevant to my project, and the licensing accompanying them, I found FreeSound. This website offers a wide range of sound effects for free under varying licenses after you sign up to their service (this is to keep record of the ways in which their work is being used). I had several different sounds I needed to use (including footsteps on leaves, an axe in wood, a wolf's howl etc.) and FreeSound was able to provide me with multiple options for each. Again, most of the sound effects were licensed under the Attribution Creative Commons (some commercial and noncommercial), as well as the Sampling+ License, meaning I could use the work for noncommercial purposes, or transform it in some way for commercial purposes.

Terms for Creative Commons: Attribution NonCommercial License

Terms for Creative Commons: Attribution (Commercial) License

Terms for Creative Commons: Sampling+ License

Recording the Dialogue

Canon recording simultaneously with GarageBand.

Originally I had planned to have consistent voice-over and dialogue throughout the whole of my animation to mirror the traditional fairytale aspect mentioned in the brief, however as I created my stop motion I realised that the narration I had written in my storyboard was too long to fit over the film - and potentially distracting from my work as well. I still felt that some dialogue would ease the storytelling of my film, so decided to condense the script to two small sections of dialogue between Red and the Wolf.

I was familiar with the style of fairytales from my childhood, and so was able to easily cut down my original dialogue to fit with the timings of my animation. I had my actress for Red (Saskia Steene Faulkner) record the voice-over for her character, as well as that of the Wolf's, which I then planned to overlay with sound effects of growling to add to his persona and differentiate the two tones.

GarageBand, the script and my draft film.

Due to availability of my actress I had to record the voice-over in my own time. If I were to redo this project, I would organise a separate studio space where I could control sound more effectively to record my dialogue - instead of using my own equipment in my bedroom. I recorded two versions of the voice-over: one on GarageBand on my Mac, and another on my Canon EOS 70D using a Takstar Stereo Shotgun Microphone. This made sure that I had a backup if any files became corrupted, and also gave me the opportunity to learn which gave me the best quality recording (unsurprisingly, the microphone on my Canon, though GarageBand was a lot more convenient to transfer to my edit).

Saskia recording the dialogue, alongside a still of my screen during recording.

Record of Sounds Used

Music:

"Crowd Hammer" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Serpentine Trek" Kevin MacLeod (incompetent.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Sneak 'n Get Caught" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Sound Effects:

"Locking a door" Dymewiz (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Footsteps, Dry Leaves" InspectorJ (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Birds" Julian Nicolas (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Woodcutting" ryanconway (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Axe Chop" yadronoff (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Twig Snap" earthsounds (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Wolf" y89312 (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Wolf Howl" Robinhood76 (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution Noncommercial License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

"Sunetul de lup" viorelvio (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Sampling+ License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/

"Werewolf hit whirrs" Robinhood76 (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Production: Filming

I shot my stop motion animation on a Canon 60D Digital SLR, and used the program DragonFrame to collect my raw footage (I then used PremierePro for post production, see Editing & Sound).

The final shot of my film.

Whilst filming on my stop motion set, there were several things I decided to adapt from my initial idea in order to simplify my project: it was important to me that I created a high quality animation, so removing unnecessary elements from my ambitious plan would help achieve this.

Canon 60D set up to DragonFrame.

• The idea of The Wolf's form being primarily a silhouette proved to be difficult in the facilities I had available to me, as the lighting I used was not quite adaptable enough to project a distinguishable shadow onto my set. I therefore used the blurred shape of The Wolf's head for his first appearance, to keep the mysterious element involved. Separate figures were used on the set with Red for later scenes.

• In my pitch I mentioned a plan to alter the lighting intensity along with the tension of the piece, however because of the light sources I was using (a pocket torch on the lens of the camera and the natural lighting of the classroom) this became very hard to play around with. If I were to redo this project I would perhaps try making colour filters for my pocket torch to affect the light projected onto my set.

Checking Red's position between the set and DragonFrame.

• My storyboard shows everyday items scattered through the forest, and props such as a matchstick bed and a silhouetted fire for the Grandmother's house. Though I still like this idea and would've liked to incorporate it, I found it confusing during my production, and decided to instead focus on telling the story through movement and narration effectively rather than add poorly executed complications in. Likewise, my idea to 'move' real props on the stop motion set into the photographic frames became difficult and I again cut this out of the project so as not to be too ambitious with the connections between my set and the photographic frames

The low opacity of my current frame let me match positions.

• I decided to cut down the amount of shot types when I began filming in order to efficiently use the time I had available to complete the project in: because of the fiddly nature of stop motion animation, every time I changed the positioning of a shot I had to carefully rearrange both the camera set up and often the photographic frames and/or The Wolf. Shots were still changed as regularly as possible, however I did not achieve the shot-reverse-shot conversations I had proposed in my pitch and storyboard; this was also due to the fact I did not want to rely on the pacing of narration that I had not yet recorded.

The final pile of used photographic frames from my filming.

• My storyboard shows The Wolf's disguise as the Grandmother to be a little pyjama hat above his ears, however after receiving casual feedback from other students that it wasn't immediately clear what it meant, I decided to change the disguise to a shawl around the card figure. I feel this worked far better and also incorporated more things into the stop motion set as opposed to having all the action taking place in Red's photographic frames.

Production: Preparation

Shooting the Action

Because of the photographic style I had chosen for my stop motion animation, I needed to shoot the action and movement of my protagonist Red before I could start actually filming on my stop motion set with DragonFrame. Enlisting the help of a musical theatre student (Saskia Steene Faulkner, pictured below) and sourcing a Red Riding Hood cape from Amazon I arranged a day for shooting the primary element of my film.

Saskia Steene Faulkner modeling for Red, alongside the original character design.

After attempting to take still photographs consecutively while directing Saskia in between, I found that the consistency and flow of her movements weren't as natural as I wanted. Instead, I tried walking 'Red' through small sections of the storyboard and then continuously taking photographs with the shutter on my camera as she acted out the scene. This gave a far more natural feel to her actions, and also meant that the consistency and flow of her motion was much more steady. Though this meant the photographs were averaging out as lower than 24fps (the speed my animation itself would be) the realism was far more beneficial to my project, and I was still able to use 24 photographs a second once filming on my stop motion set itself.

Having Saskia was also an advantage since her experience in both musical theatre, stage performance and music allowed her to exaggerate the emotions and actions I directed her to. This consequently made it a lot easier to understand and sympathise with her character when it came to the stop motion itself, as only little images were used on the set - had she been more subtle with her acting, it might not have been obvious enough to come across in the final product.

I filmed the action sequence in mid-autumn, which meant that the ground was littered with leaves and the trees were starting to go bare. This reflected my initial plan for the background, and I was able to recreate the setting effectively on my stop motion set [see below]. Furthermore, the vibrancy of the red cape stood out very well from the green and brown of the forest, especially in running scenes, and therefore I was able to fulfil my idea of using a bright colour to set Red apart from her surroundings and tell the audience she was the protagonist very quickly.

Below is a condensed version of the action and the accompanying photographs I eventually used:

Red walks through the forest and finds an axe, which she cunningly hides in her red cape.

Upon hearing a suspicious sound behind her, she runs to escape danger.

When she stops she is confronted by The Wolf, but she talks her way out of trouble and continues on her journey.

Red greets her Grandmother, but it is too late when she realises The Wolf's trickery.

Red wakes up in The Wolf's belly but remembers the axe and resourcefully escapes.

Red's Photographic Frames

Over 2000 photographs were taken on the day of shooting the action, and since I had planned to print and cut out frames individually to then place as characters on my set, this was far too many to manage. To decrease the amount of frames I first of all deleted any outtakes or unnecessary frames (e.g. photographs where Saskia was looking at the camera and/or repeated actions that were longer than needed). However, I still had far too many frames, and so I turned back to my storyboard and decided to cut out certain actions that weren't important. For example, the section where Red kneels beside some flowers for a few seconds before running from The Wolf; this ultimately didn't add anything to my overall project and so I decided against using it. (Sections such as the silhouettes of The Wolf eating the Grandmother behind Red's walking figure I decided to take out because it was too difficult for me to recreate to the standard I wanted in the time frame I had.)

A pile of photographic frames to cut out and number, alongside myself cutting out the frames by hand.

Myself and another student preparing for our animations.

After decreasing the number of photographs, I arranged these in order on several documents (keeping mind to use as much space on the paper as possible to be eco-friendly) and printed onto thin card - the figures needed to be able to stand up on their own once positioned in the plasticine floor of my set [see below]. I numbered each frame on the back to make filming more manageable and then began cutting out 597 frames in total. This was very time-consuming and I was still cutting out frames outside of class time once I had begun filming the start of my stop motion, however I do not regret using this style of animation as the flow of movement and uniqueness of the final product really payed off.

The Wolf

My second batch of wolf figures.

I copied the templates for my wolf from the initial design I had developed in PreProduction. I started with two sizes, one large and one small, with the awareness I was going to use these to project a silhouette of a wolf onto Red and the set, and I would therefore need to be able to recreate different sizes easily.

However, when testing these silhouettes on the first day of filming on my set, I realised that the shape was blurred and hard to position without also accidentally putting the card figure in the camera's frame. Due to the fact I had to balance my light source on top of the camera lens [see below] because of the limited facilities available, it meant that the space for me to fit my figure to project onto the set was far too small to work. Instead, I decided to use a blurred head of The Wolf for the initial meeting in the film, and then created a second batch of wolves in a smaller size to use on the set itself in the penultimate and final scenes. This then produced another problem when it came to showing the ears, eyes and teeth of The Wolf to accompany the narration (which I had initially planned to cut out of the figures and therefore allow light through the silhouettes in the projection). Instead, I decided to draw these features on with a silver pen, and this proved to work just as well as my first idea.

The Set

The base of my set was a 'Lazy Susan' eating platter that rotated around an axis around the middle; in my set design I had developed the idea for a rotating set in order to make the movement in my film considerably easier. I then covered the entire surface with brown plasticine in order to create a base where my photographic frames would be able to stand up by themselves while I photographed the frame. Furthermore, this made resuming the filming at the start of lesson quicker as the photographic frames left indents in the plasticine which I could track to the last frame. The trees were handpicked twigs from the same forest I had filmed 'Red' in.

My set-up for filming, with my set ready to rotate with Red.

On beginning to film there were several problems I had to solve. Firstly, my set looked very sparse as I was only able to support around ten twigs on the the set that would stay in place throughout filming, and I realised that what I thought would be the projected silhouette of The Wolf would not be visible as there was not a flat enough surface for it to be seen on. To resolve this, I added a cylinder of black paper into the middle of my set so that the shadows were visible, and this also gave me a more manageable depth to frame when filming. I also had issues with the lighting, and so decided to film under one of the tables to avoid interference from other students' lights (and also the different light levels at the various times of the day we had opportunities to film in): since lighting and shadow was such a key part of my idea I brought in my own torch and positioned it in a place which I could easily recreate between lessons.

PreProduction: Risk Assessments

Task: Complete risk assessments for your shoots.

Pre-Production: Set Design

Task: Design and develop your set ideas, with consideration into how you will film your characters within it, and the reasoning behind its design.

Draft version of set design

Final version of set design

 

Pre-Production: Format Potential and Technical Limitations

Task: Evaluate the possible benefits and drawbacks of your chosen format for your animation by completing a test run.

Test Run:

Production stills:

 

Technical Limitations:

• Due to the use of DragonFrame and it's connected support to the college computers, I will need to be in college to shoot my animation. This means that the time I have available is limited to class time and any free time I find to film.
• The equipment available from the college is also not as sophisticated as some used within the industry, and so to try and reflect professionalism I will have to put more effort into the consistency of my piece. This will therefore be more time consuming, however the software is still advanced enough to ensure I can reach a high quality in my project.
• My chosen style of animation draws attention to the use of stop motion techniques. For example, in my test run I received the feedback that I should have put double-sided images on my paper figures in order to improve, as when the horse turns around we see a blank piece of paper. In hindsight I agree with this, however as it was a demo I am still happy with the recreation of the style I will use in my final piece. I feel it is creative enough to be engaging to watch and simple enough for me to recreate in a longer project.
• As I have to collect my photographs before I start shooting, and cut out their individual frames, my project is likely to be more time-consuming than my peers as I essentially have to complete two stop motion animations.
• Though this is not an issue that may arise from my choice of photographic medium, the facilities I have available to me in college will may make it harder for me to control lighting levels: since my wolf is a silhouette I need to be able to regulate lighting in order to ensure the wolf is visible amongst the background lighting. I will therefore use a separate right source (a torch) to project my wolf silhouette, and attempt to regulate the lighting in the room itself - however since lessons are at varying times of the day this may be a bigger problem for everyone.

Format Potential:

• A benefit of using my chosen style of photographic frames moving in a three-dimensional plain is that the movement of the characters is exaggerated. As shown in my demo, the movement of the horse feels more natural and flowing as the photograph is changing on the card and in the frame itself. This therefore creates a greater change of space in a shorter amount of time, consequently making the final video more realistic.
• As mentioned in the technical limitations, the photographic frames draw attention to the stop motion techniques used. While this could be seen as a drawback, I feel the emphasis on creativity enhances the project as a whole. Part of my target audience includes 16-34 year olds who are more interested in new and different productions, and so this would appeal to them.
• As I am using photographs as my characters, there is no particular need to have artistic talent. By avoiding the use of play-dough or drawn frames I am able to potentially reach a higher quality in my piece as I am not depending on the ability to draw or mold shapes to create aesthetically attractive figures.

Pre-Production: Character Design

Task: Develop character concepts for each character in your animation, including detail on their aesthetic and the reasoning behind this.

Character concept draft for Red

Character concept draft for the Wolf

Final character concept design for Red

Final character concept design for the Wolf