Assignment 1 Task 2(Techniques And Formats)

Time-Lapse

The purpose of a time-lapse is to show how something changes, therefore time-lapses are often used during sunsets to show the change from day to night, they’re also used to see how food changes over time, to see if it moulds. Time-lapses are used a lot in films to represent a passage of time. Some good examples of time-lapses are these: 1

Movement in time-lapses are hard to capture, typically people walking by are only in the time-lapse for a second or 2 at a push. This is visible in this time-lapse of abustling Dubai.

Plasticine

Plasticine’s purpose is to create a somewhat realistic looking animation, showed by the plasticine human models, paired with unrealistic aspects, such as a face melting for instance. A funny example of a plasticine animation that has both realistic and unrealistic feature is Pingu’s The Thing by Lee Hardcastle.

Plasticine is useful as it doesn’t dry so the character can continuously be moved and modelled to create different poses, this is how movement is created using plasticine characters, for each frame the legs can be slightly moved, which in turn creates an aspect of movement.

Plasticine is better off in stop-motion films and less so in live action films, this is due to the fact that in live action you can’t make it seem like plasticine characters are actually moving and ‘real’, but this is possible in stop-motion.

Plasticine is used in clay-mation, not always to create the characters but to make other parts, for instance in early man, the characters’ lips and eyebrows are made of plasticine, whereas the rest of the character isn’t.

Plasticine is primarily made for films that are targeted more towards children, such as Wallace and Gromit. This is because it is easy to make less subtle, more in your face humour with plasticine, which obviously tends to appeal more to children’s humour.

Cut-Out

Cut-out is effective in many ways, it is possible to create clear 2D images with platforming, you can also create the illusion of rain, snow, any weather really. This is possible by placing cut outs of rain drops or snowflakes at the top of the frame to begin with and after each frame move them down the page slightly. This, in the end, creates the illusion of rain or snow.

Cut-out is also easy to create movement, since the image is essentially on a ground looking up at the camera and not looking side on at a camera it is not going to fall so lifting limbs up is easy to do with little to no consequence.

Cut-out is used for any means of animation so can vary for any audience, although cut-out isn’t used for feature films very often, it’s more of a ‘short film on YouTube’ type of animation style.

Example

Assignment 1 Task 2(Uses and audiences)

Advertising 

Advertising is typically used to inform audiences as for the target audience, it varies depending on the product being advertised and the stop motion production. If the advert is about a retirement home it is obviously focused more towards an older audience, as opposed to a new video game, this would be more tailored for a younger audience or middle aged audience potentially. When it comes to the actual moving image’s ability to inform an audience, a fast paced, fun, fight advert, such as Vimto, would do a better job at informing a younger audience. But a slow, easy to follow moving image, such as Money Supermarket will be more likely to inform, to a better degree, an older audience. 

Essentially, Infomercials inform an audience of a product and its purpose/s. 

And commercials inform and educate, they inform the audience of the product and its purpose, however they also educate, perhaps because they’re educating us of a new product, never before seen

Music Videos 

The point of a music video is primarily to entertain, however it can also inform. An example of a music video that does both of these is ‘Greyhound’ by Swedish House Mafia, this video is a fun, fast paced video, but also advertises Absolut Vodka. These types of music videos would tend to the interests of people who are fans of the music and/or people who enjoy or like the look of the
product being advertised. Thus meaning it will reach a wider audience than videos primarily made for entertainment purposes. However, the downside of this is the band/artist may face criticism, again, Swedish House Mafia are a good example again. Many people criticised them due to the music video seeming more like an advertisement for Absolut Vodka than anything else.  

The majority of other music videos’ main priority is to entertain, for instance Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel. This was the first stop-motion music video, meaning it was revolutionary for the music industry and many other artists started using stop-motion animation. It was also just a very entertaining music video. The bumper cars and dancing chickens in the video were animated by Nick Park, this boosted Nick Park’s reputation as an animator and therefore helped him become the great animator at Aardman he is today. These music videos that entertain only reach a pretty wide audience, people who like the music and also people who are interested in the animating will be likely to watch, thus reaching far and wide and not necessarily gaining much criticism unless the video is somewhat controversial. Another perfectly good example of a stop-motion music video is Fell In Love With A Girl by The White Stripes this music video made them huge. This proves that these kind of videos can appeal to a very wide target audience. 

Feature Film 

Many feature films are animated, weather it’s Dreamworks, Aardman, Pixar, Studio Ghibli, or Warner Bros, stop-motion films are a huge success and widely popular around the world. Stop-motion feature films can take ages to make, for instance Early Man’s production began in 2011 and was released this year, it also included 33 animators and 37 individual sets. The longest shot, which lasted 40 seconds on screen, took 8 weeks to shoot. This shows the lengths at which companies will go to make the best possible animated films possible.  

These films are primarily for entertainment, however can also unintentionally educate or inform us. Education can be achieved from them by teaching watchers of simple things, such as teaching us about chickens in Chicken Run. They can also unintentionally inform us as well, product placement is the best way this is possible, although product placement is more prevalent in live action films it can happen in stop-motion films too. Finally, entertainment, the thing that these films are mostly made for, every stop-motion feature film entertains audiences and to a clearly successful degree, this is visible in the amount of profit that these companies typically make per film. 

Stop-motion feature films can reach a varied target audience. Aardman, Pixar and other similar companies make films that are targeted more towards children, however they also apply to a secondary audience, this being the parents taking the children to see the film, this is achieved when sly adult jokes are incorporated into the film, the best example would be in Shrek when Shrek asks if Lord Farquad’s castle is “compensating for something else” this joke goes right over the head of the younger audience but tailors well to the adult audiences humour.