Stop-Motion

Over the past few lessons we have been looking at stop-motion clips and how they are developed and produced.

We watched some excelling and internet famous stop-motion clips online such as T-Shirt Wars and Jan Svankmajer's Food: Lunch.

Both of these films looked as if they were very time consuming.  I got to this conclusion after trying to work out how many photographs were needed in order to actually make a short movie; in Svankmajer's clip there were so many frames that in some cases it almost seemed as if it were a video.

I also looked at how they incorporated inhuman abilities into their videos. In T-Shirt Wars, the duo on film had shirts which 'moved by themselves' and would be affected by real-life occurrences.  As well as this, they were also able to place things into their shirts or take things out of them due to the vast number of shirts they had purchased in order to make the video.  In Food: Lunch, Svankmajer used clay on the lower half of his actors' to make it look like the central characters could eat large objects whole without the need to cut them smaller.  All of this would not have been possible if it weren't for the stop-motion element of their films.

Preliminary Task: Sprite Club

"A continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue. The task needed to demonstrate match on action, a shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree."

I worked in a group with Annie Powrie, Michael Gukas and George Huggins to complete this.

We decided to chose the idea of Sprite Club (Fight Club spoof)

It was our first real opportunity to use the cameras to film and then the editing software in post-production

Sound in Slumdog Millionaire

How is sound used primarily in this clip

In this clip, sounds is predominantly featured in order to create suspense whilst provoking fear and emotion for the viewers and the characters.

There is mostly diagetic sound in the clip with a few rare flashes of non-diagetic sound throughout the clip.  Because it is a flashback, all sounds in this clip come from Jamal's own memory, therefore when he first see's the attacking mob, everything slows down and the sound becomes distorted, helping add suspense to the clip.

As the flashback ends, there is complete silence and we see a close up of Jamal's face deep in thought.  This silence successfully juxtaposes to the extreme terror and violence coming from inside his mind as he thinks back over his experiences.

Three other things to comment on

- All suspenseful tones die out as the violence starts and the slaughtering is the only thing audible.

- Faint and delicate music is audible as the character of Latika is introduced to the story.

- Before the attackers arrive, the sounds of children messing around in the river and friendly conversation can be heard.  However, all the innocence and playfulness is drowned out by the deep, heavy tones which are played over it as the attackers leave the train.