Stop Motion Project
I am a video creator and I love what I do, so being able to make stop motion has always been something I have dabbled in for years. I have made small stop motion videos and GIFs in the past, but this time I elevate my production value for a full length stop motion video that starts off a story I had in the works for over 7 years now.
The Beginning of This Journey
This whole idea started out when I came up with a concept for a project well over 6 years ago. Back then, it was going to be a much smaller story and production given the available Transformers I had to work with, but as time went on and more and more characters kept releasing, it opened the door for this to be its own series of videos I could make and expand the project into something well beyond what I thought possible for this stop motion series.
From Previous Stop Motions To Now
After that initial idea stream went up, I decided to start creating smaller scale productions to become better with the figures I would use but also figure out stop motion tricks as I was making them. They definitely show their age and I have gotten better as a stop motion video creator, but I still have a long way to go.
I knew that I wanted to make a fully edited stop motion project ever since I had the story idea for this video and so I went about setting up this video and getting all the props and assets I needed.
Pre-Production
Now, this video needed to be planned out as thoroughly as possible since filming a stop motion can take a lot of time and I only had 2 weeks, so I needed to make sure all of the details I wanted in the video were laid out in the beginning.
So, I started with 2 different storyboards as I had 2 different directions for this video. I could either make a linear or a nonlinear story and so I mapped out each idea.
As I did, the linear one called out to me more, if only because it could end up being the first part of the series I was creating. The nonlinear video would’ve been a trailer of the whole series, but I was worried if I didn’t have enough of all my elements in the trailer that it wouldn’t draw in attention for the series at all.
Pre-Production Document
For a more well detailed analysis of my pre-production, all the notes for the smaller details are in this pdf document.
Why Transformers?
The reason for the topic of the stop motion being Transformers all stems from my love of the franchise. I always loved robots, and as far back as I can remember, I loved seeing anything Transformers related. Then I discovered the toys they made for the characters could actually transform and it gave me ideas on how I could make my own story one day.
Next I would discover stop motion the only way I would- with some Transformer videos. Seeing the same toys I own move on their own in video form opened my eyes to the possibilities and lit the fire of inspiration that would lead me to this video.
The Filming of the Stop Motion
I had experience filming stop motion before, so I knew the basic principles of how it should be done, yet I still learned a lot while actually filming this. First off, I took multiple days with multiple hour sessions of filming everything I needed for this project, which is the most amount of time I have put into any stop motion video I have ever made.
Given all that, I still went ahead with the story I had and filmed as I always did with stop motion- taking photos of each small movement as frames so they can be stitched together later as a video. Not just that, but I also leveled up on the technical aspect of how I edit my videos and made use of some new ways to make the footage I filmed useable, like dramatic zoom ins, change color to black and white, speed up and slow down footage, and other tricks I picked up myself like how to use a green screen and selecting a background for the project that would go in place of the green screen.
Not only that but I did have a challenge with the audio to the visuals as I had never voice acted over a stop motion before, so I didn’t have enough frames set up for the dialogue. My solution was simply to reuse frames to fill the space of the audio. It’s not the best solution, but I only learned of this in post production, so I was strapped for time to get that last element in. Lastly was the music and sound effects which made this project complete.
First Scene Filmed
With all the filming I did for this, I ended up mapping out this project with one big scene in mind for the video. This scene was filmed before any other for this project and was just reused in the final project. It was it’s on standalone video for anyone who wants to see this scene on its own.
Final Video
This is the final video. A stop motion production I did not think myself capable of making before, but now I have full confidence in the future of this series. Upon making those final story revisions from my old idea and having now a better grasp on storytelling and writing, I was able to plan out several more characters for the future that have not yet shown up yet, but the poster gave me lots of ideas of how to display those ideas.
Speaking of the poster, I made that with the purpose of advertising the series all over my social media accounts to show the people who follow my work that this long seemingly abandoned idea has made its return and is officially starting. No longer can I say it was lost to time as my own content pushed ahead, and can now stand alongside the other projects I produce.
