Julia Mazucante - My first Stop Motion

In order to do my Stop Motion sequence, I wondered what objects could be used to create that motion sense by changing their shapes, dragging the, rotating, and other manipulations. After some research and aligning with what I have created for tasks 3 and 4, I've decided to create what I later called: Flowers Dance. I had no idea what the result could be, however, I used some references using flat-lays, removing the petals, dragging the leaves, etc. but the best part of the creative process for me was not knowing where the sequence would flow onto the next frame. I really let the experimentation lead how the next frame would be.

My Studio at Home

So, I bought a flower bouquet, a tripod and built a mini studio at home and captured over 530 images for my sequences.

After experimenting and creating a few sequences, I noticed how challenging the lighting could be when building all the frames, so I had to make the room as dark as possible and work in Lightroom at post-production to adjust the levels of the images/frames.

Also, I had to think about which point I would destroy the flowers since I would need them later for another sequence. I would highly recommend that for this sort of experimentation to get extra props and things you think you might need. In addition, as I worked on this project by myself, have the Bluetooth remote to make the shots at the camera helped the capture process to runs smoothly. I would also recommend using the Grid Function to make sure your props are aligned and centered to the frame.

So I started with 2 elements and kept adding more flowers, leaves, petals and four experimentations later, this is my final Stop Motion:

This Sequence has 199 frames at 0:09 duration at a 0:03 overlapping in Dancing Dissolve Blending Mode with Royalty Free mp3 called Walking Downtown.

One of the hardest parts for me was adding my hand to the frame and moving everything I had in the composition with the other hand while holding the Bluetooth remote and trying to keep my other hand static. It was a challenge!

Other Experiments

1. This was my first experiment with stop motion. I used just 2 elements and it is about a flower that was looking for its other half. Quite fun and simple to make. This stop motion has 70 frames.

2A. For my second experiment, I used the flower's petals as the main elements. When playing backward and at a faster tempo, the stop motion becomes much more interesting.

2B . The movement of the leaves and the path that the petals create gives the impression that they were making their way to the core of the flower. I've rendered the same stop motion at a different image sequence and tempo to show the difference. This stop motion has 93 frames.

3. For my third attempt, I decided to incorporate more elements and play around spreading them, bringing them together, and rotating. It was my first attempt adding my hand to it and thinking about the idea of telling a story through the movement of the flower. When I finished this one I realized I had to work on my studio lighting to minimize sequence breaks. This motion has 98 frames.

Image editing and applying filters in Lightroom were essential to make sure that the sequence looked unified. I had to create a preset for each sequence in order to do so. Have a look at the Before and After:

In conclusion, I had a lot of fun and a lot of work as well to come up with these results. I spent some nights doing research and I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, so I had to experiment!

I believe that the creative process is also organic and if we keep limiting ourselves, or thinking too much, it can be the worst thing to do. However, for some projects, a Script can have it's benefits and that's what we will talk about next (: