Skyhook TV | EuroDip Stop Frame Animation Project
Text is lifted from The Skyhook Blog.
Film Trailer:
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/3188684[/vimeo]
(now stepping back in time to November 08…)
Today I was preparing for shooting the animation scenes that would represent a big step towards the long-overdue completion of my first full-length bike film, EuroDip.
It was a while back that I wanted to have a crack at animation, and below is the result of my first attempt at storyboarding one of the sequences (which was never made in the ends, as it happens). So with car and bike pictures, and South Park characters printed out and cut to size, and using a couple of pencils, a packet of sweets for the car boot and an apple to imitate the sunset, me and Dave went for it.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/3052695[/vimeo]
Unbelievably bad-looking? Yes. Useful to have done? Definitely.
Moving on a few months then, I had more of an idea of what the animation scenes would entail.
They involve two model cars (vans in fact) that move along a large old map of Europe by way of stop-frame animation, and thus represent the journeys that were made on the trip. It’s a nice way to break up the different sections of the film, and add a little bit of production value in there too.
Thanks to Birmingham University geography department for trusting me with an old a probably valuable piece of cartography.
The hire car we had on the trip was a black Ford Galaxy which wasn’t too hard to source as a model on Ebay, but the Howies van, a white Toyota Hi-Ace was not so easy to find. So had to settle for the next best thing, a VW Sharan, and paint white over the back windows. This was not quite as simple as it sounds, but luckily I had the services of aerosol art extraordinaire and ambassador of all things Black Country, Stuart Styles to my semi-disposal.
Just masking the model was effort enough, then making sure the paint did not go on so thick as to run was a fair job.
Once it was drying, I went to get custom mini-prints of the howies logo to stick on the van. This was hassle again, but thanks to a friend of Stuart and his trusty CAD / cutting machine, it was sorted and looking good.
With everything ready it was time to head home, ready for a long shoot tomorrow…
We had to transport an impressive amount of kit to Miles and Stuart’s office for this shoot.
- One video camera,
- 2 digital SLRs,
- one large map,
- 2 tripods,
- one desktop computer,
- remote flash and a white umbrella.
- Coffee (Dave)
It took an hour or so to set up, then over the next 9 hours we took a total of 780 photos, most of which were taken whilst I was in very uncomforable positions, as I had to move both cars minute distances for each shot, then roll out the way so as not to get in the way of the flash, roll back in again, and so on.
The easiest shots were the ones where the camera was locked off on the tripod and the model vans moved into, or out of shot.
Harder shots included tracking shots where the camera was moving along with the models so they appeared still, with the ground moving underneath. It was important here to make sure the wheels of the models moved for every shot, otherwise it would have looked cack and unrealistic.
But the hardest shots (like the title sequence) involved a combination of tracking shots and movements away from the models to show a larger area of the map. This was particularly hard because in addition to making sure the models were moving the right distance each time (my job), Dave had to move away with the camera for each shot whilst keeping the models in the same place on screen.
One sequence was imitating us travelling at night, so we had to try and get a different kind of light on the map. I used my Pag camera light with the dichroic filter to give the light a blue-ish look.
Over the following weeks, Dave pulled off some pixel-magic with After Effects. We layed a clip of blank super-8 footage (thanks to www.videocopilot.net) over the top of the sequences to give them a bit of an old feel.
Dave also digitally super-imposed headlights and brakelights onto the models for the night time shot. I’ve no idea of how he did it exactly – i found it best not to ask but rather just let him get on with it!
The night time sequence:
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/3055555[/vimeo]
And the intro / title sequence:
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/3055570[/vimeo]
So glad to have this film complete – work is now beginning one editing the second bike film which was a road trip through Southern California and Nevada. I aim to have it done and finished in 3 to 4 months!
