starchild-yuki

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scratch film process

It is difficult to combine scratch film and live action film. Because scratch film are usually abstract but live-action parts are concrete. However, as the theme of dreams, I think it is worth trying to combine abstract and concrete. For the live-action movie, I plan to use stop-motion shooting mode, while the scratch movie is presented in an abstract form, mostly express the atmosphere and color of dream. Therefore, It can show the scene of traveling back and forth in the real world and dreams.

In the part of the stop-motion, I will use an abnormal trajectory to show the dynamics of the characters, so this part may not have an obvious storyline. At the same time, I will add a part of rotoscoping in the stop-motion movie to make people  more difficult to distinguish whether it is a dream or reality.

In the part of scraping, I will pay attention to the performance of colors, because dreams are usually colorful, and the flickering colors will make the whole film more dramatic.In the part of scraping, I watched many references and representative works such as Swinging The Lanbeth Walk (1939) by Len Lye.This provided some inspiration and ideas for my final work.

Swinging The Lanbeth Walk - Len Lye(1939)

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Stop motion film--Alice

In addition to Norman McLaren’s stop-motion film ‘Neighbors’, there is anther stop-motion film that had a great impact on me which is Alice(1988) by director Jan Svankmajer.

Alice (Alice) is a 1988 dark fantasy film directed by Jan Švankmajer. Its original Czech name is Něcoz Alenky, which means "Alice's stuff". This is a loose adaptation of Lewis Carroll's first book "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865). girl. Alice (Alice) is played by Kristýna Kohoutová . This movie combines live action with stop motion animation, and is known for its dark and uncompromising production design.

Stop-motion animation has always looked creepy, and at the same time, stop motion is also easier to create a weird atmosphere. Therefore, stop-motion is vert suitable for some impractical themes such as dreams.

Svankmajer describes a dream “as an expression of our unconscious, uncompromisingly pursues the realisation of our most secret wishes without considering rational and moral inhibitions, because it is driven by the principle of pleasure” Therefore, Alice is a very good reference for me and it is a great guiding work.

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scratch film

Scratch is a playful and inventive way of making a handmade movie and making scratch film is also a good activity to explore the scientific ideas of persistence of vision, light and color, and the artistic connections to direct animation and film making. Individual elements of the scratch film are ultimately linked together to create a collective work of art.

Norman McLaren - A Phantasy in Colors (1949)

Norman McLaren - A Phantasy in Colors (1949)

Take “ A phantasy in colors(1949)” as an example, there is a great combination of colors and rhythm. The whole film uses rich color and abstract expression method, the bright colors appear in every rhythm point which make the whole film very lively and has a strong visual impact. This gives me a new inspiration in my control of rhythm and pictures of my final project.

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Expression of rhythm

There are many ways to express rhythm. The most common way is to convey the sound and rhythm of a film by recording music soundtracks. In my research on artists, I discovered how to vividly convey the rhythm of influence in the age when recording technology was still underdeveloped which is portray sound on 16mm film.

Carve sound on film --- Norman McLaren 

In 1937, McLaren produced his first professional animation "Love on the Wing" , still painting directly on film. This short film is McLaren's first attempt at "animated sound". In the past, in traditional movies, the light and shadow produced by the fluctuation of the electric current, through such a device, after the edge of the film is translated into the code, the sound is formed, and then released through the microphone. When the movie is shown, a beam of light can be The moving edge of the device is illuminated on the photovoltaic cell, which becomes an electronic beat drive, forming a speaker to release the sound. McLaren’s idea is that if the watchable part of the movie is made by painting on film, then the same method can be used to make the soundtrack in the movie. Later, many of McLaren's animations used this sound technology.

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rotoscoping process and a story

This is my first time try to use rotoscoping technique create film. I combined rotoscoping with stop motion to create this piece of film. My theme of major project is about dream world and this part of story is telling the story of one of my true experience. 

On one night of my childhood, I was half-dreaming and half-awake seeing a person with a white outline coming in from the door of the bedroom and putting a key by the bed and running away. At the time I thought this was my dad, and I called him twice at the moment.After that i realize that this white silhouetted figure was not my dad. I have never forgotten this wired experience, so I recorded it in the form of a film.

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Disney's Lazy Artifact: The Story of Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping technology is often used in animation, film and game production. Disney is an example that often uses rotoscoping and Recycled Animation to be “lazy”. let’s see some fun examples.

With the introduction of Disney, I will introduce what is rotoscoping and share some stories of Rotoscoping behind this.

One of the Fleischer brothers, Max Fleischer, invented rotosoping in 1915 when he created "Out of the Inkwell".Simply, rotoscoping is a set of camera devices that project the film on the animator’s desktop so that the animator can draw up.

The advantage of this technique is that it allows animators who can't draw can even draw the same action as a real person! (somebody like me) Moreover, it make the animation action more smooth. However, it sometimes make the action less vivid and dramatic to some extent. For me, i’d like to rotoscope some frame of my stop-motion photos to enrich the picture.Create a contrast between virtual and reality.

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Final Project Proposal

Traditional animation and live-action stop-motion movies are my main focus and I tried to combine the two film modes to create my final project.I think that the two film formats can be combined well mainly because they have similar production methods which are all made of consecutive actions frame by frame.

Therefore, I will use Rotoscoping and stop motion animation to make my final film by taking photos and it is worth to mention two artists who have influence my ideas.

Norman McLaren

He is a Scottish animator, director and producer in Canada. He is famous for his work at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He is a pioneer in many fields of animation and film production, including hand-drawn animation, film graphics animation, visual music, abstract film, pixel and graphic sound. His colorful abstract animation films have a deep influence on my work.

BLINKITY BLANK(1995)

BOOGIE-DOODLE(1948)

Moreover, his famous stop-motion movie “neighbors“ also had a big impact on my desire to use stop-motion technology.

NEIGHBORA(1952)

Harry Everett Smith (May 29, 1923 in Portland, Oregon – November 27, 1991 in New York City) was a visual artist and experimental film producer. 

Heaven And Earth Magic

I suppose that stop motion animation can better reflect a humorous atmosphere and rotoscoping technology makes the action more consistent.At the same time, I will combine painting and reality to tell a story, so I think these two techniques are very suitable

For audio processing, I plan to crate a piece of original sound or rhythm audio first, so that I can draw with a certain rhythm when making images. This will make my movie more in line with my music rhythm.Finally, I added the final version of the rhythm to the original music to make the music rhythm of the whole film more rich and complete.

Production time planning

week 9 create stories and ideas  find trial music

week10  find trial music and shooting the stop-motion

week11 Rotoscoping the images i shoot from the stop-motion

week12 Rotoscoping the images i shoot from the stop-motion

week13 Rotoscoping the images i shoot from the stop-motion

week 14 Integration

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Something about Dream of the Rarebit Fiend

After watching a few recommended movies, I found that Dream of the Rarebit Fiend impressed me the most. I was attracted by the absurd and humorous plot. The story tells of a man’s absurd dream world which he had hallucinations after eating and drinking. Accompanied by a humorous soundtrack, he began his adventure in his dream world. The swaying camera and the cutting of the crisscross scenery highlight his dizziness and with the ups and downs of the soundtrack these make the whole film more dramatic.In the film, some special techniques are used to externalize some emotions, such as the hero's headache as a villain jumping out and knocking on his head.All the unconventional plots make the whole film full of humor and drama which let the viewer have infinite reverie.