Making of... "Fear Is On Your Side"

Apart from my animation work, this music video is probably the biggest personal project I've taken on to date.
The entire video consists solely of band practice footage, with no parallel storyline (as you see in the majority of music videos) therefore I had to spend a huge amount of time synching/editing all my recorded footage in order to create the video you see below.

Because the editing process for this project was unlike anything I've done before, I've decided to write more about it for anyone that may be interested...



As you may have read in my previous post about the music video, I had spent about an hour filming the band while they performed the song multiple times (so that I could film different takes and camera angles), and ended up with over 90 pieces of video footage.

After downloading all the footage from both cameras onto my laptop I went through a lengthy process of watching every piece of footage so that I could delete the rubbish/irrelevant pieces while renaming/labeling any pieces that I wanted to keep for possible inclusion in the final music video.

Some of the 90+ pieces of footage renamed for easy identification.

Once all the pieces of footage were suitably renamed and easy to identify, I opened my editing software (Sony Vegas Movie Studio) and set about synchronizing all the different bits of video footage with the band's pre-recorded music track.
Having not really made a music video like this before (with each band member filmed separately and getting edited together later) I was unsure of where - or how - to start editing all the footage. The first few minutes I was almost aimlessly jumbling bits of footage around the timeline hoping I could quickly figure out how best to proceed.
Soon realising that this would be a very time-consuming project, I came to the conclusion that there were no easy shortcuts, and that the best way to proceed was by taking a simple, albeit long, route...

My instinctive approach was to just work my way along the timeline, adding and editing all the relevant pieces of footage as I went. However my aimless jumbling of footage around the timeline (as mentioned earlier) made me realise that it would be far easier to work on footage of just one instrument at a time, rather than working on all four instruments simultaneously. As a result I only ever needed to work with a small percentage of my overall pieces of footage (which is easy to keep track of) and the number of video layers I was working on was also of a lower quantity.

I don't suppose that the order in which I edited each instrument matters much to the final product, but at the time it seemed as though the drums would be the best place to start. The drums had the largest quantity and quality of video footage to choose from, and therefore seemed like the best instrument with which to find my feet and build upon.

Working with the longest pieces of drum footage first, I added these to the timeline on various layers and synched each of them with the dubbed version of the song. Once all the long pieces were added and synched to the song, I began editing them all down into one video layer by snipping and deleting all but the worst pieces of overlapping footage.
This allowed me space on the timeline to reduce the number of video layers I needed to use, and meant I could start adding new smaller pieces of drum footage without worrying about mixing up the existing edit.

Example of longer video pieces at the bottom, and new short pieces above.

The idea of building up all this footage for just one instrument at a time was that I would end up with a full music video of nothing but that instrument: Afterwards I would do the same for the other three instruments, and then all I had to do for the final edit was layer up all four videos and cut away small sections from each to create the conventional editing you see in the finished video. (It was perhaps simpler to do than it is to read or understand!)

After 14 hours of editing the drum track I began work on the vocals because they feature for only a small part of the music video, and I felt that it was important to know how much of the vocal footage was useable before committing to the project any further. (There wouldn't be much point editing the rest of the footage if I'd have to re-shoot much of it).

For the vocals I started a new project in my editing software, so that I could go back and edit the previous drum track if I needed to do so later. But rather than work on a blank timeline I imported a copy of the finished drum track so that I had some sort of reference material that didn't make it feel like I was editing a near-empty video (cos remember that the vocals feature for less than half the song). Once complete I rendered out the footage as a new video file of vocals only, meaning that I now had full-length video files for both the drums and the vocals.

By a late stage in the second day of the project I had started a new project for the bass guitar footage. This consisted of only two full-length pieces of footage and a few smaller pieces, so compared to the drums was a breeze to work through. I saved the bass edit as another full length video file, and was now roughly three quarters of the way through the full project.

On day three I was finally working on footage of the last instrument - guitar. Again footage consisted of only two full-length pieces and a few smaller pieces, yet the guitar solo and many varied camera angles made editing a bit trickier than the bass guitar footage.

After three days of synching and editing (equating to roughly 30 working hours), I had complete video files for each of the four instruments: So for the final time I opened yet another new project, and began the final stage of editing.

At this stage I had each instrument video edited in what I regarded as the best way possible, and all four complete video files were now layered up in the timeline ready to cut for the final music video.

This is definitely where the simple yet long working method that I had selected at the beginning of the project began to pay dividends: All I had to do now was use the beat and rhythm of the song to edit the video in small sections, and then choose the best instrument to display for each section while deleting the other videos from it. (The image below demonstrates what I was doing - notice how all the video layers, bar the bottom one, are cut into small sections with few overlaps between them all)...

Screenshot of all four instrument videos layered and cut for the final edit.

Once all the layers were cut into small sections and I was happy with how the full video now played, I considered the project complete, and rendered out the finished music video ready for publication.

Overall I'm pleased with how the project turned out. It was certainly more work than I anticipated, but it was good practice, and I learnt a few more things about the editing software that I bought late last year.

The positives to editing with this method are that:
+ It's relatively easy to keep everything under control;
+ It allows for a mix of synching and editing, rather than a huge amount of tedious synching prior to any fun editing.

The negatives of this method are that:
- You tend to spend loads of time editing nice little sequences for one instrument, forgetting that it's likely to get hidden by the editing of other instruments later on, which ends up being a waste of time.
- Although I say it's easy to keep everything under control, I'd imagine that if you accidently delete a few video or editing files before completing the project and can't retrieve them, then you'd be in big trouble.

10 Steps To Succeed: A Guide For Future 4th Years

I've learnt a lot over the past 3 years from helping lots of 4th Year animation students, and now that I've gone through 4th Year myself, I thought it'd be a nice idea to share some of my insight here so that future 4th Year animation students can make their final year at ECA as straight-forward as possible. So here it goes:

1) Do your research, and LOTS of research! The word 'research' can be used for everything, so use it as an excuse to watch loads of films or do all kinds of bizarre things...
Animation does not, and like any art form, should not, be confined to influences from within its own circle: If animation is influenced by animation how far can you really develop it?
For sure there is an incredible variety of styles within animation, but you can get much more out of the original source (eg: painting, illustration, photography, graffiti) rather than from an animation source that has taken those original influences and filtered them down to a fraction of the brilliance of the original art forms.
You can then use all your influences to fully develop your own style and create something new, which deviates from the stereotypical. This is exactly what the examiners are looking for when they assess your work, so make sure you give them plenty of it in your end-of-year portfolio if you want to get the best grade you could hope to achieve... (Just make sure you document why it influenced you, and how you developed it into your own work within your portfolio).

2)Try to experience using various different animation techniques before starting 4th Year. Not only is it going to be an interesting experience, but it can be vital to how your film turns out too...
If you've only ever done one type of animation then you don't know about the potential you have with other techniques. Likewise if you've tried lots of different techniques you will have the knowledge to decide which is best suited to your temperament and/or which is best suited to telling the story of your graduation project. It certainly isn't worth sticking with one particular technique just because you prefer it/because it suits the story/because it is quicker or easier... You should try to strike a balance between all the important factors (your interests/the artistic potential/time available/costs/requirements/etc).

3) Try to learn about all the software available to you before starting 4th Year. I went into 4th Year with a project proposal stating that I wanted to make 4th Year as slow and challenging for myself as possible, therefore I intentionally avoided digital shortcuts (like AfterEffects) in order to do as much of my film by hand as possible; but in that process I missed the opportunity to learn how to use AfterEffects properly (which is not good for my CV).
By learning about all the different software available at college before starting 4th Year you can make informed decisions about what is the best way to achieve whatever you are trying to create; you don't have to waste time learning the software during your already busy 4th Year; and choosing to use programmes like ToonBoom or TVPaint (which currently seems to get ignored at eca) could save you a massive amount of time during production in comparison to Photoshop.
I would certainly recommend TVPaint (available on some of the college computers) for everyone who plans on doing a drawn film with traditional cel-style colouring (similar to Scooby-Doo) because it only takes half an hour to get used to it, and thereafter it takes seconds to colour each frame, which in comparison to Photoshop could save you at least a minute per frame!

4) Start thinking about your film as soon as possible. In other words, start working on your 4th Year film as soon as 3rd Year is finished (if not earlier), and spend as much time as you can afford during the summer holidays developing your ideas so that they can get as much development as possible. This way you can get the most out of your ideas without worrying about the limited time you have left, or worrying about your CVCS projects on top of your animation projects (as will happen once Term 1 begins).

5) Don't begin work on your CVCS project until Term 1 begins. It may seem like a good idea to get the less enjoyable part of the course [if that's what you think of CVCS] out of the way as soon as possible so that you can spend all your time in college working on your animation; but in reality when you return to college you will be asked to write a short proposal for CVCS, and for the remainder of term 1 you will be given SO MUCH really beneficial advice and unknown research topics from the staff that all the work you had done over summer will become pretty pointless - and you will then regret not spending that time on your film instead!

6) Get a good idea of your story and/or technique before the end of 3rd Year. That way you can get vital feedback and advice from the staff and/or current 4th Years before leaving for the summer, and you will have a good idea whether your concepts are possible or not. From this you can discover how much potential your ideas have from an early point and develop them from there, rather than spend all summer working on an idea only to discover 3 months later that it won't be possible to pull off successfully.
Ideally you should have a film concept with as much pre-production complete as possible before returning to college in September. If you can create a portfolio with the basic script, visual designs, storyboards, etc, by the middle of October then you will be in the best possible position for getting the most out of your remaining time at college (the time flies past incredibly quickly!).

7) Don't be afraid to make drastic changes. No matter how much work you have put into the project, don't be afraid of making drastic changes because they can lead to much greater end results - but don't change things constantly all through the year or use it as an excuse for unfinished work!
If you are not happy with your project there might be something small that is not noticeable to you, but very obvious to outsiders - so seek their advice. If you feel that your idea is constricting your artistic capabilities then at the very least take a short time to check if there is something new that will get more out of you, because not only will it result in a better film at the end, but it will also be more enjoyable to work on too.

8) Work in stages. After writing your script and completing the storyboard animatic do everything else in stages so that you've always got a full story to show (regardless of how it looks). This allows you to check how well the story actually works, means you can do editing all through the year, and means that if you run out of time at the end of the year you at least have the full film available for assessment without it looking too jumbled or confusing.
I'd suggest having the animatic assembled at final screen resolution (eg: 1020x576 at 150dpi) first of all. Then go through the animatic doing rough animation for all the shots - adding them to the animatic as you go. After the rough animation is complete you will have an animated version of the film, which gives a very strong idea of how the film will play, and will allow outsiders to give critical feedback without misunderstanding things as they might do with a crudely drawn animatic.
Next do cleaned-up animation for all the shots (starting with the most valuable shots, leaving the least important shots until the end), and add these to the animatic as you go...
Finally do the colouring, texturing, backgrounds, or whatever else you want to have, and continue doing those in stages too.
When colouring, go through the entire shot with one colour at a time, and then go back and do the next colour for the entire shot, and so on and so on... This process saves you a bit of time per frame because you only need to pick the different colours once each for the entire shot, instead of once each for every frame. It may not seem like much time to save, but over the course of your entire film it will be a very substantial saving.
Likewise, if you plan to add digital textures and other smaller details that affect the aesthetics, but which don't particularly enhance the film (ie: things that aren't vital to the story), leave them until the rest of the film is fully finished. This will allow you to dedicate all your time to the most important things so that by the deadline you have a film that appears to be complete even if you have not finished it to your original plans... (And you can always continue working on those smaller details after the assessment deadline if you want).

9) Say goodbye to any social life you had. 4th Year is almost certainly going to require much more work than any other year of your life - and if it doesn't then you haven't pushed your project far enough; so you can pretty much say goodbye to living a normal social life for this year. Some animation techniques will give you more room for error than others, but regardless of how long you expect your film to take to complete, don't say to yourself "I'll just cram more in towards the end".
You have the entire year (October-May) to work on your film, so use it! It will be easier to cram as much of your work into the early stages of the year than to try cramming everything into the last few months - when you will have even more than just your film to concentrate on... (I originally predicted my film to be fully rotoscoped by the middle of March because it was such a quick process, but it was also very tedious and didn't look how I really wanted, so in reality I was just trundling along while putting things off to try finding a better solution, and in the end I was still animating at the start of May - which I really regret with hindsight!)
You will probably need to spend term 1 on pre-production balanced with your CVCS project, and don't waste your CVCS project because it could bring in valuable marks at the end of the year to mitigate if anything goes wrong with your animation project.
During Term 2 you should spend all your time on the animation project because it is the only time during the year that you will have completely free for it. At this point you should also begin arranging helpers, sound designers, and whoever else to work on your project because help is always a very valuable resource (and it's better to have that from an early stage than only during the last few weeks). Sound designers and composers will need a full version of your film before they can do audio work, and they usually prefer to work towards the end of your year, so try to get most of your film (if not all of it) complete before the beginning of term 3.
Term 3 is the final 5 weeks of your project when everything becomes more frantic. As well as working on your film, you will need to: write loads of things for the degree show and press release forms; spend time working with sound designers and composers; compile your full years work into a professionally-presented portfolio for the assessments; finish writing/printing/binding your production diary (depending on whether you write it by hand or type it on the computer); designing postcards and/or business cards; designing and printing your DVD presentation; create a trailer for the degree show catalogue; and a load of other little things that the college will demand are mandatory...
No matter how organised you are, there are always these little things that are likely to get forgotten or in the way of "more important" work; and although you can't ignore them, it really does make life so much easier if you get things planned and done within plenty of time. Term 3 will be stressful enough, so don't leave things to the last minute - particularly because things tend to take longer than you'd expect (who could ever have imagined it would take me over 12 hours to satisfactorily bind 6 production diaries?!), and you can't account for all kinds of potential problems (computer crashes, corrupt files, printing errors, low printer cartridges/no replacement cartridges, misplaced documents, forgotten showreel, mislabeled DVDs...).

10) Seek assistance (or if you are not in 4th Year, try to assist the 4th Years). Over the past 3 years I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to help other students from outside of my own year group, and I cannot stress enough exactly how useful those experiences were!
In 2nd Year I did most of the scanning for Lora Jensen's film, and from that I discovered how much physical work is involved in creating a 'short' film - it was unbelievable... Even at the end of my 4th Year I still can't comprehend the vast amount of paper that has been used for my 4 minute film; and the hours required to pull it off can be overwhelming if you are not prepared...
In 3rd Year I got to do a wide variety of tasks with the 4th Years, which meant that before I had even finished 3rd Year I had very strong knowledge of everything that needs to be done during 4th Year, and it helped me plan everything for my 4th Year to near-perfection (there are always some things that don't go to plan)!
I have always had very strong motivation, a willingness to work all hours (if required), and a curiosity to see exactly how much work/stress I can put myself under before giving up, so I had always planned on doing my 4th Year film without any assistance, and although I did to some extent achieve it (I was up for 61 hours straight by the end of the final day, having never even done 40 hours before) I don't think it was worthwhile... The self-satisfaction I received from managing to make my entire film by myself before the deadline is almost non-existent; I didn't enjoy the emptiness of working on my own all year; and I could have developed my leadership skills by getting others involved in the production of my film (which is always good for ye olde CV); and by allowing others to help you then if nothing else, you can at least have the satisfaction of knowing that you have given others some very valuable experience and possibly assisted in the development of their own work.


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Here are some quotes from others in the department that I found useful:

- “If I can give you one piece of advice; it’s to start planning it all right now [May - end of 3rd Year], and make sure that you’ve got the story, the style, the process, EVERYTHING, completely sorted out before October. That way you can get as much time as possible to work on the animation. I always thought to myself in 3rd Year, 'Gosh, how are they all struggling to finish? They’ve had all year to work on it, why are they finding it so hard?'
Don’t do what I did, and keep putting it off - start planning now, and then get started right away. I’m now in the situation where I left it so late, that I am at the end of the year and I’ve only completed half of the animation” (Louis Hudson, 23/05/08)

- “I think it’s best to just pick a simple concept right from the beginning. Many people go into 4th year expecting to produce a 10-minute masterpiece [of the quality like Disney, Petrov, or Burton] and then they realize much later that they won’t be able to achieve it, and they have to cut it all right down – which ruins the story... It’s only a student film after all, it’s not a big expensive industry film.
At the start of the year, mine was the shortest at 3.5 minutes, but even I’ve had to cut it down, so I think the final animation is going to be about 2.5 minutes - and that includes the titles and credits” (Erica Weiste, 21/04/08)

- “Make a strict timetable at the start of the year, and remember to factor in CVCS, holidays, illness, fashion show, problems, etc… You don’t really begin animating until the middle of term 2, and then you’re really pushing time” (Grace Chan, 08/12/07)

- “It’s good that you’ve found something that you enjoy doing and is interesting to watch [the paint on glass animation]. After all, if you need to do the entire film in a style you don’t enjoy then it’s going to show in your film. If you enjoy doing what you’re doing, then you’re going to enjoy the film, and the audience will appreciate it all the more too” (Aaron Johnston/Erica Weiste/Neil Kempsell, April 08)

- “We as an art college, should be striving to produce innovative, exciting new works; and be attempting to break new ground for the future animators… We shouldn’t be trying to imitate someone else in the professional world, or settle for what we know and have access to. We are the explorers of today (like Lye, McLaren, or Disney were in the past). We have the rest of our careers to comply with the industry and do as someone else tells us, but for just now, as students, we should do what we want to do” (Neil Kempsell, 14/04/08)

- There’s no longer enough time to do what I was hoping to achieve. So I’m just going to have to cut it down, simplify it all, and struggle on… It’s a lot to do in the time we have” (Alison Cross, 15/04/08)

- “I hope that I can get it finished on time; I think I will be able to do it… I’ve only got two scenes left to animate, but I’m already 2 weeks behind schedule. I’m just grateful that you’ve been able to help, because that would probably be another two weeks of 24 hour Photoshopping!” (Erica Weiste, 21/04/08)

- The animation is getting easier, but there’s still so much to do that it will mean not sleeping for the next few weeks” (Alison Cross, 24/04/08)

- “That room has changed you all” [the stopmotion animators]. “You’re not even a shadow of your former selves” (Simon Cartwright to Jessica Cope, 23/05/08)

Contemplation of sound

Filmmakers try to avoid using more dialogue than required because it does not enhance the atmosphere or further the story, and I think music is the same. If music runs all the way through a film then there is little variation and it either becomes a distracting ambience or just a very long music video - which I do not think is very effective unless it is for a musical!
In real life we hear noises rather than music (unless we are plugged into our “i-plod” or some wee ned cruises past in his modified Corsa with the toones blasting), yet we still experience all kinds of emotions, so I do not see why films need music in order to create/enhance the atmosphere.
Music also gives the film a sense of rhythm and timing, which kind of makes the story’s progression feel pre-determined. This works fine for some genres, such as comedy (which has “comedy timing”) or adventure films (because characters usually plan what they want to do for the start of their adventure) therefore the musical rhythm mimics the planning that the protagonists are doing in their head, which gives the music a purpose and enhances the atmosphere. However in frightening situations people are scared because they do not know where they are or what is going to happen, which makes them feel psychologically unstable and distorts their sense of time.
For the reason that time is distorted in frightening situations I think that music (certainly any music with a rhythm or clear timing) is inappropriate for film genres like suspense and horror. People are usually scared in unpredictable situations because they focus on the unpredictability (and what their imagination is conjuring up) rather than trying to take their mind away from it to focus on more pleasant situations. Likewise I think a good horror film is one which forces the audience to peer into the silence or blackness and imagine what is going to happen, rather than prompting them to feel a particular emotion through music. After all people are only limited by their imagination, so silent/ambient horror films should be really effective on people who allow their imagination to reign free.
Horror films that rely on music and/or shocking imagery are less effective than ambiguous films because the viewer can hardly modify the experience, so if something does not shock it does not work, and these physical objects are also open to personal interpretation – which can cause a reaction that the filmmaker did not intend and which then ruins the film for some people.

To test this, try searching video websites for clips about your non-film-related hobbies and see how you react to particular forms of music on it… For example, I am interested in motorsport and modified cars; and if I search for something very specific but with global appeal I will find thousands of very similar videos. If I make a search for “Lewis Hamilton, Silverstone, 2008” I might get ten near identical videos with highlights from the ITV race coverage, but it is very likely that all the ‘authors’ who published that copyright material on the Internet will have added their own choice of audio track to ‘enhance’ the viewing experience… I would have happily watched their video with the ITV audio (or a type of rock music that I like might be just as good) so I would be inclined to watch the full video, whereas if the author has added rap music it will have to sound quite impressive if I am to continue listening to it, but if they have added a terrible chipmunk techno rave cacophony I am probably going to abandon my search regardless of how amazing the video footage is! It may have been the author’s favourite music and they may have found it to be a perfect match with the video, but I have a completely different interpretation of their choice of music – and this differing personal interpretation ruins the viewing experience for me.
Some readers may find the link between people’s interpretation of a type of music to be of little relevance to their interpretation of a film soundtrack, but I am merely using it as a common analogy for how people interpret things in different ways, and why I think it justifies my desire to make the music in my film as minimal as necessary…

The type of film soundtrack that I use in my graduation film (which has a suspense/horror element) will obviously affect different people in different ways, but I think a lack of music is the most suitable option. From my cinema experiences I feel that many audiences feel uneasy watching a quiet/ambient film in the cinema, and although they may not appreciate this type of soundtrack (just like I do not appreciate chipmunk techno rave) the ‘silence’ will make the audience feel uncomfortable just like the protagonist in my film. The lack of music in my soundtrack will distort peoples perception of how long the film goes on for, which again imitates the perceptions of the protagonist as she explores the spooky old mansion. And finally the ambient/minimal soundtrack allows the audience to imagine the horrors that may or may not be lurking in the dark, which should be much more effective than the audience being forced to anticipate them coming (as happens with the full orchestral score in The Shining).
For an example of how well a horror/suspense film works without music, watch Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. There is very little music in this film, and all the main terror scenes are only audible from the squawking of birds.

Influences part 11: Alfred Hitchcock

Doesn't this image look similar to the paintings of Edward Hopper? (See my earlier post about the influence of Hopper on my work).

The most obvious influence with Hitchcock's films on my graduation film is the suspense element that he is famed for. I have been interested in creating a suspense film since I started 3rd Year, but it was a long time before I considered writing such a story for my graduation film (roughly two months into my 4th Year, after having spent 5 months prior to that working on a different story)! But anyway, here I am (at last) with a suspense element in my graduation film, and I'm now much more enthusiastic about trying to pull it off.
In the last 6 months I have watched 14 Hitchcock films as influential research for developing the suspense element of my graduation film, as well as almost 100 other films for alternative research purposes. While the suspense element is what Hitchcock is famed for, there is no single/specific element that creates the suspense - it is built up with effective use of several elements together - and that is what I will try to focus on here...


Setting:
Hitchcock films are regularly set within common locations that either seem typical of any town in a Western country (for example within the town centre, library, church, motel, seaside resort), or in real-life locations that are well known (like San Francisco, Quebec, Mount Rushmore, Albert Hall). This gives the film a familiarity within which the audience does not expect crime or murder to happen, making the audience realise that such events could easily happen anywhere - including their own friendly neighbourhood. This prospect terrifies the audience, and the terror makes the audience anxious to discover what has or may happen, therefore creating a lot of suspense.
I feel as though this element of Hitchcock's work is not as effective in today's society because we get access to horrific news from around the world instantly through TV and the Internet. This means that we now get regularly bombarded with news of murder and crime, so it feels commonplace in the 21st Century, and this reality of commonplace murder therefore lessens the impact that fictional stories about death can have on us... This does not mean that fictional stories will no longer affect us like they affected people when Hitchcock made his greatest films, but simply that the setting of Hitchcock's films is not as relevant to today's society.
For example, I do not think that a film about war set in a Western country like America or Britain would have much impact on kids in those countries today because kids hear about their war in Iraq on TV but have little idea of the impact that war would have on their life, whereas if you show the same film to an older generation who experienced the Second World War, I think it would have a much greater impact on them because they have a real understanding of the story.
It is not that for a fictional suspense film to be effective today it must tell a story relatable to everyday life and set within a typical location, rather it is that the story should seem realistic without already being commonplace in the media.

Characters:
Aside from the fact that Hitchcock's protagonists are often played by the glamorous people of Hollywood, the characters in his stories are usually living a believable life (eg: a common man wrongfully accused of crime, a woman on the run, or someone in the wrong place at the wrong time) which helps the audience to relate to and sympathise with their situation.
The audience's sympathy for the character makes them more emotionally involved in the story, and therefore heightens the audiences response to the situation arising within the film. This emotional connection to the film is a key component with any film genre because without it the audience is likely to have little involvement with the story, and they will probably not care much for what is happening, or have any interest in seeing the film again.

Shot composition:
Hitchcock uses a lot 1st or 2nd Person shots (from a human perspective like head-height) that are immediately relevant to the viewpoint of a character in the story. This places the audiences directly into the action, and involves us with what the characters on screen are doing within our proximity. This places us in the same situation as the characters, allowing us to more-or-less experience their life, and feel what they feel. This shot composition makes the story situation feel real to us, and heightens our emotional response to the story - increasing the suspense.
Along with the regular use of 1st or 2nd Person shots, Hitchcock also uses what I will call "suggestive angles" (shot from a non-human perspective like the far end of a tunnel or from the ceiling - a position not immediately relevant to a specific character in the story) that takes the audience away from the situation of the characters in the story, but hints at something nearby that could be dangerous for the characters. This tells the audience of a threat that the characters in the film are unaware of, but rather than spoil the surprise for the audience, it makes the audience anticipate the threatening action, which then allows the film director to play with where, when, and how this threat will take place. It may occur immediately, or will occur after many false starts, or may not happen at all.
Regardless of what happens after the audience sees such a shot, the audience's anticipation of threat creates a natural suspense in the imagination of the audience, but the director will often choose to play with this natural suspense, and the less predictable the director's decision is, the better the suspense may be - so long as the director does not make it too recurrent.

Timing:
A basic film will be shot at a leisurely pace, but in order to create suspense the pacing will fluctuate more often. For example the pacing may slow right down to calm the atmosphere only for a sudden change to dramatically alter the story - creating a fright. The pacing may get quicker and build up to a frantic climax, or it may just steadily fluctuate to keep the audience guessing.
There are various rules commonly adopted by directors, but the key is to allow for change and not to be predictable or for the pace to be drastically off. As a general rule in relation to suspenseful moments, shots will slow down and there will be few cuts, so that the audience gets sucked right into the moment and is constantly expecting a sudden change to scare them.


Through the work of Hitchcock I have learnt a lot about pacing my film and shot composition, which has greatly assisted in developing the suspense elements of my graduation film.
There are a couple of things in my film that could be identified as being influenced by his work, but hopefully my eclectic range of other influences will make it more than just seem like an imitation of the Master of Suspense - because that is not what I have been aiming for.

To conclude, saying as I have barely referenced Hithcock's work in this post, here are some of my favourite Hitchcock films:
Vertigo,
North By Northwest,
I Confess,
Strangers On A Train,
Dial M For Murder,
Rear Window,
The Trouble With Harry
ROPE.

And here is a great website with lots of images from all of Hitchcock's films:
1000 Frames of Hitchcock

Genius! (explained)

The problem with modern animation is that it looks too real.

All too often the creator(s) of modern animation focus on producing slick graphics that imitate the smooth texture of a photograph, rather than unashamedly displaying the artistic processes that went into creating the image. The final result is eye-catching and commercially appealing, but lacks the magical quality inherent in traditional techniques, and therefore the lack of magic makes the slick graphics of modern animation become stale quickly.

Traditional methods of animation are usually associated with a rough and clunky texture in their aesthetics, which (especially in today's market where slickness is expected), makes it look quite tacky. However it is this "tackiness" that is the defining feature of visually appealing animation.
This clunkiness proudly displays how the animated image was created, and makes no attempt to hide the nature of the work, therefore making it feel like a piece of art that can simply be admired or (if one wishes) to be deeply analyzed in order to get a greater understanding of the making of the work. Modern animation on the other hand is constantly striving to increase the slickness of its graphics, and to hide the personal touches of the artist or to hide the pixels that built up the image. By doing this the modern work attempts to trick the audience into believing it is a living object and not an artwork: we are then obliged to accept that it is a living object and to ignore the artistic processes that created the image.
The other problem with modern animation is that their slickness tries to aesthetically imitate reality rather than display a new and exciting technological interpretation of reality. No matter how realistic the image looks, there are always subtle differences between it and reality - the texture, shading, atmosphere - so it always looks slightly plastic and wrong. Undoubtedly there are fantastic looking CGI animations and computer games being released today, but when they portray a subject from reality it never looks completely perfect, and is therefore not as satisfying. The plastic appearance of CGI is the reason why no CGI character has looked as good as the toy characters in Toy Story (1995): the toy characters from reality that the film characters are based upon were made from plastic, which the CGI in the film reflects perfectly - therefore the aesthetics of the plastic protagonists looks fantastic, whereas the natural elements of the film - the people, tress, food - looks very plastic, yet even in later films like Wall-E still looks slightly wrong...

Traditional animation processes may not be as popular as CGI in the commercial animation market today due to time constraints, budgets and whatever other limitations, but the artistic nature of traditional animation means it will always look more interesting. For instance,
- The CGI King Kong (2005) moves realistically and has fantastic detail, but it does not seem to be a real living gorilla (or giant gorilla, or whatever Kong may be). He moves like a real living character and in the film appears to be made from the same material [CGI] as the environments that he both comes from and terrorizes - therefore it looks like he belongs in both those environments and makes his terrorism feel less threatening. Compare this to the 3D stopmotion King Kong (1933) where he moves in a clunky manner and looks obviously like an animated puppet, and it becomes obvious how traditional animation is better. The 1933 Kong looked terrifying, but not because he looks realistic. His clunkiness makes him look unreal (reflecting how King King was not real in the myth that existed about him before his capture), and because he is not made from the same material as the environments that he inhabits within the film he looks like an alien and therefore poses a much greater aesthetic danger to the people in the film.
Despite which ever animation process you may prefer, which one is going to capture your interest when channel hoping on the TV? Is it the slick and hyper-real CGI Kong or the clunky stopmotion puppet? I'd bet you will be more beguiled by the obvious crudeness of the puppet rather than the subtle crudeness of the CGI.
- Computer games look more stunning than ever before, but their slickness does not look as magical as previous graphics. Which graphics most stimulate you? Is it the simple 2D pixels of early arcade games, or the hyper-real slickness of 21st Century games? Perhaps it is the modern games, but will you spend more time talking about the graphics that look real than the graphics that have artistic designs, colours, and unusual features?
- What kind of paintings are more interesting to admire over many years? Realist paintings have a stunning quality because we cannot imagine how to create such an image, but as soon as we uncover a subtle brushmark we quickly realise how the entire image was painted, and therefore lose interest in the realism... On the other hand, Impressionism and such painting styles make no attempt to hide their construction, therefore we examine the technique as well as how it works to create the fuller image. This artistry is what makes art stimulating.

Why CGI will never fully replace traditional stopmotion

How Pixar’s “Cars” reflects upon our fondness for nostalgia, and therefore describing how stopmotion films like “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” will continue to succeed in the age of CGI.”

The success of CGI animated films has led to traditional forms of animation, such as cel animation and stopmotion, being considered “a dying art” (Depp, 2005); and the increasing cost of traditionally animated film-making had led Walt Disney Feature Animation to convert from its traditional cel animation technique to full-CGI (StudioBriefing, 12th March 2004). This is verified by Jill Goldsmith (2004) who reported that Chicken Little would be Disney’s “first computer animated picture sans Pixar”. As a result, Disney’s animation studio in Orlando was shut down after the completion of one of its last hand-drawn films Brother Bear (StudioBriefing, 25th March 2004). Meanwhile a seperate report stated that Walt Disney Feature Animation (now known as Disney Animation Studios) “will sometimes produce hand-drawn toons (sic), such as 2009's The Frog Princess” (Garrett and McClintock, 2007).
The fact that Disney - possibly the world’s best-known traditional animation company - chose to abandon cel animation shows that CGI is becoming so dominant within today’s animation market that it threatens the existence of traditional forms of animation.
Excluding the two stopmotion films from 2005 (Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-rabbit, and Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride) it personally seems - through looking at the List Of Animated Feature-Length Films on Wikipedia (16th March 2008) - as though the last major/notable traditionally animated feature film (that does not rely on lots of in-computer drawing and colouring) from out-with Disney or Japanese animation was produced in 1996 with the cel-animated Beavus & Butt-head Do America, or the stopmotion/live-action film James And The Giant Peach (produced by Tim Burton).
The decline of traditional animation techniques in any format (whether being adverts, children’s television, a cartoon series, or feature film) can mainly be attributed to the breakthrough in 1995 of the world’s first completely CGI animated feature film Toy Story, created by Pixar. Since then, it seems as though almost every major animation studio has attempted a CGI film (Holson, 3rd October 2006), or at least heavily incorporated the use of computers into their animation process (either for drawing, colouring, compositing, or post-production editing).
Although CGI can produce animations of a fantastic quality (any work by Pixar would be a fine example) it is also all-too-often responsible for producing work which, despite its sophisticated graphics, is heavily compromised (Hittle quoted in Frierson, 1998. Pg 183) by a lacking sense of character or life (Svankmajer quoted in Steinhart, 2002) that traditional techniques almost always exuded. A simple comparison of the different methods employed in creating children’s television shows is a perfect example of this now that several of the old, traditionally-animated shows that were once popular long-running series have recently been re-created in CGI and began to lose their original personality (Magic Roundabout, Scooby-Doo, and Mickey Mouse are examples of recent CGI conversions that have, to various extents, failed to recreate the original magic).
Unfortunately the large attraction for companies to switch to CGI is because it is usually quicker to produce and a lot cheaper than traditional animation techniques. As a result, CGI is now so commonplace that only the few large-budget CGI productions that can afford to invest in both the aesthetics and the narrative will ever be huge blockbusters – only 3 from the Top 20 computer animations, based on Lifetime Gross, were produced by a studio other than Buena Vista or Dreamworks (Box Office Mojo, 2008); the remaining majority with their smaller budgets, recycled stories, and standard plastic-looking aesthetics will just merge together on the rubbish heap looking like Lego bricks in Legoland.
This is why, when a cel animation or a stopmotion project emerges from between the triliions of pixels that we are subjected to each year, it always feels fresh and ‘new’ (despite having a much longer and more interesting history than CGI), and why we jump at the chance to see it in the cinema; re-hear the same old story of how a stopmotion animator is actually some sort of life-creating God:
"Animators have… recreated for each new generation of filmgoers a myth of the artist as Pygmalion: an ingenious creator who can breathe life into the inanimate using a kind of magical process that is extremely laborious and inaccessible to common people…" (Frierson, 1994. Pg1)
and why we can wallow in nostalgia by watching Blue Peter once again just to see their feature about the stopmotion process (which I remember watching in 1995 when Wallace & Gromit appeared in their third short film A Close Shave, and again in 2005 just before the premiere of their first feature-length film: The Curse of the Were-rabbit).
This point of how we almost always seem to disregard the primitive old world in favour of our exciting, high-tech new world is beautifully portrayed - although rather ironically in this context - within Pixar’s 2006 CGI feature film Cars.
Cars was the 7th feature-length CGI film released by Pixar following on from a number of award-winning animations by Pixar, including Oscars for Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. (AMPAS, 2008)
In Cars we follow the protagonist Lightning McQueen (a rookie racecar challenging for The Piston Cup in a large corporate stockcar championship similar to NASCAR) who gets lost during his transportation to the championship-deciding race, and who ends up trapped in a desolate little village called Radiator Springs, somewhere along Route 66. Despite constantly struggling with his attempts to escape from the quaint little village and get back to his buzzing, high-tech, corporate world of stockcar racing; Lightning gradually realizes that it is “nice to slow down every once in a while” (McQueen, 2006) after having formed close friendships with its simple old citizens, and discovering the beauty of the past.
The film, based on life-experiences of director John Lasseter (2006), is a long winding road of discovery but is essentially just a nostalgic nod back to when the world was simpler and more pleasant, based on the history of American transportation and community.
Although the film - through looking at the deterioration of communities along the now “Historic” Route 66 as a result of the construction of the interstate - is based on Western societies abandonment of our past, it also shows how we can find beauty and solace in the past because it offers an escape from the frantic pace of life in the 21st century, and suggests to us that all those gadgets and materialistic goods do not make us happy.
This theme from within Cars offers an accurate analogy of stopmotion’s place within an animation market saturated by CGI in the 21st Century: we are living within a market filled with modern luxury cars (CGI) where technological advancements make them obsolete within a couple of years, and where simple old classics (stopmotion) are being disregarded, apart from the rare renovation - which in comparison to the modern luxury cars paradoxically looks new, fresh, and exciting.
This analogy reveals that most forms of animation will always have a place within the market as long as producers are prepared to invest in the time and costs involved in using the specific technique, and as long as the market is not already filled with just that one type of product (like CGI has become at the moment).
Due to the high costs, long production time, and precise nature of stopmotion, it has found itself being readily replaced by CGI for convenience. It is fitting that the opening song in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride says:
“It’s a beautiful day... Assuming nothing happens that we don’t really know; that nothing unexpected interferes with the show; And that’s why everything, every last little thing; every single, tiny, microscopic little thing must go; according to plan”.
Although it is a song about the wedding rehearsal for Victor van Dort to Victoria Everglot, the content of the song reflects perfectly the nature of attempting a stopmotion feature in the age of CGI.
“It’s a beautiful day” may be seen as a reference to how nice it is to see a stopmotion feature (or two considering that Wallace & Gromit’s first feature was released a few weeks earlier) within all those CGIs that were released the same year including: Chicken Little – Disney’s first CGI film; Hoodwinked; Madagascar; and The Magic Roundabout – a CGI film version of the classic stopmotion TV series. (Wikipedia, op. cit.)
The rest of that passage could refer to how much planning went into making Corpse Bride, and why if anything went wrong, regardless of how minute the problem, it would have had bigger repercussions on the rest of the film.
John Halas (1987. Pg 166) wrote that for Burton’s earlier stopmotion film, The Nightmare Before Christmas, they had produced 3300 storyboard images amounting to a sketch for every 1.5 seconds of film. That shows just how much planning can be involved in stopmotion projects.
The issues pertaining to stopmotion today have resulted in a perceived willingness by producers to settle with CGI instead of stopmotion. These producers could be linked to lines later in the same opening song of Corpse Bride where it says, “How could our family have come to this? To marry off our daughter to the nouveau riche”. At this point, the ‘family’ would symbolise stopmotion, the ‘daughter’ represents the animation project, and the ‘nouveau riche’ would be a reference to those producers who have acquired wealth through the cost-savings available by giving away stopmotion to CGI.
Despite the modern problems of stopmotion, there are many critics who argue that CGI cannot recreate the textures or even the life that is present in a stopmotion film (Purves, 1996). The ‘life’ in stopmotion perhaps comes from the spontaneous way in which things occur while filming and because, as Purves is quoted as saying (in Furniss, 1998. Pg166), “even the animator cannot exactly predict where the puppet will go”.
Due to this, stopmotion has a “great group and rare group of people” (Burton, 2005) that are still specializing within its field, rather than moving to CGI.
Tim Burton is perhaps one of the most prominent film directors today, and it is his creativity and interest in stopmotion that has helped to bring traditional animation back into the public eye. (Saunders, 2005. Johnson, 2005).
The cult status of both Tim Burton and his various stopmotion projects has shepherded conversations about animation away from the zoo of talking animals that we have been constantly revisiting over the past decade (Holsen, 2006), and has hopefully renewed public interest in both the animation process and the creativity behind it.
Corpse Bride for example, has utilized the old-fashioned method of stopmotion – a technique that is often associated with early cinema’s special effects thanks particularly to the extraordinary work of Willis O’Brien & Ray Harryhausen – but Burton has executed it so flawlessly that it feels as slick as a CGI production (Abbate, 2005) and along with the release of Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit the same month, stopmotion should have had a strong effect on the audience.
Just like in the conclusion to Cars when we see the two modern vehicles (in the form of Lightning McQueen & Sally Carrera) “just going for a drive” along the twisting old roads of Route 66 through the beautiful countryside, and reveling in nostalgia; we can only hope that some of the big CGI studios will divert from their usual highway of modern animation, and try traveling on the back roads of traditional animation where they should not “drive on it to make great time…” but “… drive on it to have a great time” (Carrera, 2006)
But even if those two popular stopmotion films do not encourage a breakaway from CGI in the coming years, at least we have seen that the traditional animation techniques still have a charm and a quality within them that we will always be able to revisit.

Written by Andy Macpherson,
Edinburgh College of Art, 19 March 2008



BIBLIOGRAPHY
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