Stop Motion: Canon 5D & FCP
 

We're novices at stop motion, but recently shot a stop motion music video on a Canon 5D MK 1 and edited in Quicktime/FCP. It turned out pretty well - if anyone's interested I'd be happy to discuss techniques. Filmed in the beautiful city of Cape Town, South Africa....

YouTube - Ian Henderson 'This Angel Town'

cheers
Ian

That was awesome Ian! Very well put together. I've never done stop motion but i'd love to take a shot at it. Can it be done with a D40? or does the 5D have a certain feature that allows you to do stop motion accurately?

Thanks... I think pretty much any SLR digicam could be used to do this kind of work. The feel of the piece comes from the movement in the camera, and some variances and over-exposed shots add to the effect - not all of it was in post.

We shot something like 9500 frames, so your camera better be pretty robust. At one point the mirror inside the shutter on the 5D came loose (it's a problem with the first gen 5D, the result of poor quality adhesive) - those funny blurred, half blacked out images around 1.53 were the result and they fitted in great.

We ended up working at the lowest jpg resolution the camera can shoot at because we were shooting really fast - and it was still something like 2560 x 2000 pixels, so there was some downres-ing. Most of it was not shot on motordrive, which gives the odd spacing between the shots and makes much of the movement so surreal.

Ian, congats on that video, I thought it was well done and quite fitting for this type of video - this form of stop-motion is called Pixilation and for a newbie you did a great job! I hope you continue to do more.

Terry: You can do stop-motion with a D40 - you just need to get a remote for it (about $20). Ian's Mark I would probably do a better job (the D40 sometimes generates flicker) but it is possible. The following stop-motion film I shot entirely with a D40:
L19: Disposed on Vimeo

Hello Ian,

Very nice video. I've also finished my first stop motion short film involving animated human and I'm interested in exploring this further with a second movie and I would like to improve on what I already know. If you can help me out by discussing the techniques you used I'll be very thankful to you.

I'm going to post a link to my movie in a new thread.

Bye.

Sure. Well, the concept came from the title line "they're going crazy in this angel town." We wanted the whole feeling of the film to have a hyper-real, otherworldly quality, which is why we shot with a stills camera. It's also the reason for the extreme grading. The DOP is a great photographer too...

Fire away and I'll tell you what I know.
ciao