For my final video project I wanted to create a stop motion video. Inspired by my unwillingness to ever clean my room, I decided to create a video that looked like I commanded the room to clean itself. The initial storyboard is below, where I outline the major parts of the video: Me seeing my dirty room, the bed making itself, the clothes putting themselves away, the garbage taking itself out, and a shot of the clean room.
Filming: To film the video, I used my iPhone 4's built in camera. For lighting, I made sure to do the entirety of the filming with my room's light on while it was dark out to ensure it was consistant. For the first shot of the entire dirty room, I made a pseudo-camera rig out of a soda holder that I attached to my door frame. Then for each of the 3 stop motion scenes, I placed the rigs in various positions. I then kept the camera rolling as I went in and out of the scene, moving each piece a little bit at the time. I made sure to exit the scene long enough after each move to ensure I had a shot to use in the video. Then for the final scene of the video I simply held the camera at the corner of the room and panned around at the clean room.
Editing: To edit this video, I used a combination of iMovie and Final Cut Pro. I knew since my video was stop motion and didn't require many complex edits I could use iMovie for the majority of it since it was already installed on my laptop and I had issues finding time to get to the lab. To create the stop motion effect, I took the raw film and simply clipped out all the parts that included me in the scene adjusting things. This left me with many small clips of the room itself. While most stop motion videos are compilations of still shots, this is actually a compilation of really short, .4 second videos. I chose to do it this way for one big reason: lack of sturdy camera rig. If I took still shots, I risked moving the camera ever so slightly every time I hit the button. That's a huge no-no for stop motion. By just filming continuously, I avoided this. Once I had my stop motion scenes complete, I bookended them with the video of me entering the dirty room and then the panning of the clean room. I noticed that the video I had taken was pretty washed out. So I took my scenes and loaded them into Final Cut Pro once I was in the IMM Lab. I adjusted the color balance of each of the 5 scenes individually to give them a fuller, darker feel. Back in iMovie, I added an end credit scene which included my name and credit for the music. The music I chose was the song "Sore" by the artist Arrange. I know the guy personally, so I contacted him asking if I could use the track for the video and he gave me permission (it's a bonus track off a self released album so there's no label who I'd also need permission from). I felt the upbeatness of the song, which is set of chopped up set of Soul samples, fit the novelty of the video perfectly. I made sure to time the music properly so that the drums kicked in once I snapped my fingers to activate the cleaning. I then made sure to fade out the end of the song at a natural feeling time.
Evaluation: Overall, I was happy with the outcome of the video. My favorite part was how much the music added to the video, and how well its timing worked out. I thought the video was nice and simple and to the point. However, if allotted the chance to do it over, I would make a few changes. For one, I would use a better quality camera. The iPhone 4 camera is good, but not nearly as good as the 4s or a normal video camera. Next time I would like to get better quality footage. Secondly, I would work on making the lengths of the three cleaning sequences more equal. The garbage scene runs much longer than the clothing or the especially short bed scene. Lastly, I would try to find a way to make the last scene where I pan the camera around the clean room a little more steady. Doing it by just holding the camera was a little too shaky and uneven for my liking. Overall though, I was very happy with the outcome. I feel as though it captured the novel feel I was going for, and came out great.
