How to remove stop motion: basic principles and necessary tools

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:35

Recently, stop motion is gaining more and more popularity in the world. And the more original the scenery, the more interesting the script and the presentation of the material, the more subscribers and views you will have. In this article, you will learn the basic principle of stop motion filming and what you need to do it.

How to remove stop motion: basic principle

The basic principle of shooting is to create a large number of shots. First you need to write a script, make a scene (for example, a doll house) and place the dolls in it. The initial shot is taken, then the model performs a small movement, then the shot is taken again, and so on. Thus, when editing, you will get a puppet animation.

You must shoot from a tripod or from a stable and level surface. It is better to take pictures with a delay to avoid unnecessary camera shake when you press the shutter button. Lighting should be natural, as the flash can cast too harsh shadows. If possible, make the lighting so that you do not have to correct anything in Photoshop. Also secure the stage securely so you don't accidentally hit it.

Ideally, for one second of such an animation, twelve shots should be taken. But just in case, take spare shots, as during editing, most likely, you will have to remove some defect.

What do you need?

Before you shoot stop motion, think carefully about the shooting plan. For this, plasticine figures or any articulated dolls are most suitable. For example, Monster High dolls. Stop motion is usually filmed at a specially prepared place. To create a scene, you may need cardboard for decorations, paints, assorted designer paper and miniature dollhouses, as well as situational toys.

You can use a professional camera (such as "Canon 560D") or a smartphone. Remember that before you shoot a stop motion on your phone, you must take special care of the lighting. By the way, you can install a special editing program on your smartphone, so you can create cartoons without downloading all the images to your computer.

In order for the pictures to be from the same angle and there was no shaking effect, you need to buy a tripod for the camera or for the phone. If you can't get it, then install the camera or phone on a flat and hard surface, after fixing it.

Sound recording

But what to do with the sound? Once you've prepared your script, it's best towill record, if not the entire sound track, then at least individual replicas of the characters. Ideally, the whole sound is recorded first, and then pictures are created for it. If you first edit the video, and then start recording the sound, then you may have to change the characters' lines (add something or vice versa).

What can I record sound on? There are several options: on the phone, voice recorder or microphone. The highest sound quality is obtained when recording voice on a professional voice recorder or microphone. However, in this case, you will need a sound card and a special program (Sonar, Cubase). But if you shoot on a phone, then you can also record the sound on it, and then edit it there.

Editing and dubbing

Now you know how to shoot a stop motion (Monster High, for example) on a camera or phone. The next step is installation. If you use a phone, then, as mentioned above, you can install it directly on it. If you shoot with a camera, then install a special editing program on your computer and upload the pictures there. If you record sound on a voice recorder and use a lot of audio files in the process of creating animation, then it is better to install the program in which you can edit both sound and video at once (for example, Vegas Pro). Processing photos (for example, correcting white balance) is necessary all at once. Batch processing is used for this.

When you learned how to remove stop motion and fully mastered itcase, you can start using various special effects during the editing process (for example, fire, rain or snowfall).

It was thanks to this technique of creating an interesting video that the first cartoons appeared. Now stop motion is a powerful way of expressive art, it is used not only by bloggers on well-known resources, but also by professionals in their field - film and television directors. Currently, there are many studios specializing in frame-by-frame animation.