Blog: Stop. Motion. An. I. Mation.

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Crikey O'Reilly but this weekend was BUSY. On Saturday I went up to picturesque South Woodford to attempt to give a pile of STUFF to one of the charity shops. They weren't having it. "We're FULL!" they said, but luckily i had a LETTER from the LAST time we gave some stuff to them, showing i did GIFT AID. "Oh, well if you're a gift aider then... but we don't want any books!"

I showed them though - one of the bags I have them of OTHER stuff DID have some books in. HA! Take that, Barnardo's! The books and a fine array of singles (hem hem) went up the road to Cancer Research, so if anybody in the South Woodford - or any other variety of Woodford - area hankers for some obscure indie 7 inches from about 15 years ago (never played! I don't have a record player!) then the Cancer Research Shop should be your first port of call.

After various OTHER duties - including TESCO, some much needed computer maintenance, prop making, and FINALLY getting ALL my CDs put back onto the MyPod - SUNDAY found me up bright and early and ready to start FILMING. I've had an IDEA for a video for the new Christmas song bubbling away in my mind for the past few weeks and, after Saturday's final bout of prop making, I was ready to FILM. I wanted to get everything fully prepared because part of the NATURE of the story means that once started some things could not be re-done. I'm talking CRAFT KNIVES!

So off i went on what turned into a seven hour ODYSSEY in STOP MOTION ANIMATION. Cor! Stop-motion animation is DEAD GOOD... to start with. The first couple of hours FLEW BY as I used my Exciting New Webcam (TAPED onto my camera tripod with BLACK INSULATION TAPE - oh! black insulation tape! how i love thee - if only you had more uses!) and VERY Exciting MASSIVE HALOGEN LAMP to film a series of cardboard fixes as they acted their way across the top of my Nan's bureau. As we went along I realised that the story I'd mapped out was a bit too long, so had to DROP a whole bit and replace it with something shorter that would wrap things up a bit more neatly - i'm being VAGUE about what the story actually IS here because I want it to be a SURPRISE!

As I say, it started off being dead good, and whoops of GLEE could be heard around the house as I watched each chunk back on the computer. I was aiming for 12 frames per second, which made it look very much in the style of Bagpuss, Clangers etc rather than something SMOOTH, so i moved forward at fairly high speed, but by LUNCH TIME I was beginning to lose my patience. You know on EVERY DOCUMENTARY EVER about Animation where they say "Ooh, you need to be very patient"? THEY ARE NOT JOKING. "Oh good God", I thought to myself, "I need to make the reindeer go behind the fireplace" (NOT A EUPHEMISM), "that's going to take BLOODY AGES", as EVERYTHING needs doing in minute detail.

Still, by early evening I'd FINISHED and was relieved to be able to put the various cardboard props and characters away and bring matters to a close with a little bit of LIVE ACTION. The idea is that it's going to be like a children's programme from Days Of Yore, with me the presenter at the start and end (and maybe interspersed throughout, but maybe not), so I got myself dressed up to look, as usual, DASHING and SUAVE. And definitely NOT A Bit Creepy. NO WAY.

The task ahead now is to EDIT it - I'm hoping it'll all fall into place nice and neatly, but have a PRESENTIMENT that I'll still be at it in a fortnight, screaming abuse at cardboard figures as they REFUSE to move in time to the music. One thing I AM pretty sure of, however,is that it's going to look DEAD Christmassy and DELIGHTFUL, so if you're WAVERING about whether you're going to JOIN IN with the singalong aspect mentioned in newsletter I would advise DOING SO. It's going to be GRATE!

posted 8/11/2010 by MJ Hibbett

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SPAMBOT FILTER: an animal that says 'to-whit to-whoo' (3)
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