For this exercise, we will animate our character riding on her behind (as if she was a car) to enter a garage. Choose a frame rate of 12 frames per second, and be sure to tell your actor that you want him or her to sit on the ground so the actor won’t bring his or her best pair of pants to the shoot. To begin, we will want to animate the garage door opening, and we run into our first problem. You can press the automatic garage door opener and stop the door at any point, but when you press it again, the door will close, defeating your efforts to animate. You can do one of three things:
1. Raise the door to the first position and photograph it. Put in a C stand, tripod, or some other pointer that indicates where the door was. Close the door, and then open it and stop when it gets to the next position beyond your marker. Remove your marker, photograph the door, and repeat. Needless to say, this is time consuming.
Figure 2.4 If your camera and computer have an iLink or FireWire cable, you can use that connection. Another solution is to use the video out with the Stop Motion Pro Video Adapter.
Figure 2.5 If shooting outside, get a long extension cord for both camera and computer and make a sunshade for the monitor from a cardboard box. Mount your equipment on a roll-around table so you can easily move your setup.
Figure 2.6 Set your focus to manual, find a good focus, and leave it alone. This prevents auto focus fluctuations.
Figure 2.7 Set the camera white balance for daylight or the outdoor setting. The sun icon should appear. Set your exposure to manual, find a good setting, and leave it alone. This prevents auto exposure fluctuations.
Hooking up a Digital Video Camera to Stop Motion Pro
At this point, we will begin to use video cameras to image our animation. There have been tremendous changes in technology over the years, with many cameras, formats, and cables coming into the mix. With an older camera like this Sony TRV 27, a digital iLink cable was a good choice if you were for- tunate enough to have an iLink connector on your computer. Stop Motion Pro would recognize the signal instantly. As time went by and things became a bit more confusing with different signals and formats, one signal remained constant, and that was the video signal coming out of cameras that allowed you to see the image on your TV set. Because this was stable technology, Stop Motion Pro has come up with a great solution for getting video cameras to talk to computers. In these situations, you can use a converter box called the Stop Motion Pro Video Adapter. All you need do is take the yellow video output from your camera, plug it into the SMP video adapter, and plug the adapter into the USB port of your computer. It’s as easy as that. This system will work for a wide range of cameras and is reliable for Windows XP, Vista 32, Windows 7 32, and Windows 7 64. There will be more on this technology in Chapter 10. The SMP Video Adapter is available on Amazon and can be found in the products page at filmingthefantastic.com.
Figure 2.8 Open Stop Motion Pro and create a new production called “Pixillation shot: Road Rave Tk-1.” Click OK.
2. Unplug the automatic door opener and open the door manually bit by bit, locking it in posi- tion for each frame.
3. The fun way is to not care how fast the door opens and just click on the Stop Motion Pro capture button several times in rapid succession as the door is opening. This is not only fast but also captures the blur of the door opening because it will be moving as you are taking the pictures.
All you need do now is direct your actor to pose like he or she is driving and have the actor come down the driveway and move into the garage. The easiest way to direct your actor is to reference the set. In this case, the driveway was made up of several large concrete pads that made a convenient checker- board and alignment grid. There were 10 division lines from the street to the garage door opening. You can instruct your actor to position his or her feet at the division line for each frame and also align the body along another line so that the actor travels straight. Have the actor strike her pose, shoot a frame, and tell her to get up and reposition on the next line. Once she is set, shoot the next frame and continue. Because we are shooting at 12 frames per second, we know we will get to the garage in a little less than 1 second. On the 11th frame, we instruct the actress to turn her body. You can use your hands as a guide for her to position her feet. When she has entered the garage and exited the frame, click away and close the door again. Presto! You’ve done Pixillation.