Preparation - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 172

could not be done on stage, and set the whole action vertically, on a tall mountain. It worked
as a visual metaphor for the i lm's hierarchy, and allowed some impressive visuals of characters
dwarfed by this mountain, echoing the story. Too much spectacle would have separated the
audience from the characters' emotions, so there had to be a balance.
It is important to know what camera moves and lenses are available when writing and
planning a i lm. Rupert Bear did not have moving cameras as such, pushing me into i nding a
more energetic way of telling the stories. I had characters running in and out of shot, popping
up behind things or racing about on skateboards. If a camera cannot provide movement
and energy, then make sure that the staging does. Shooting with wide-angled lenses will
emphasise any movement more than the limiting close-up lenses.
Strobing
Strobing can happen easily when, even though the puppet appears to be moving in the same
direction as the camera, its relative position within the frame changes slightly, appearing to
move backwards. This gives an unpleasant judder. This is unavoidable if the camera is moved in
singles and the puppet in doubles, making the puppet shift around in the frame, i ghting the
move. A good reason not to shoot in doubles.
The easiest way to avoid strobing is, assuming the luxury of a monitor, to mark a constant point
on the character on the screen for each frame, making sure that each new move progresses
with roughly the appropriate increments. If it slips back or has a lesser increment then it will
strobe. If there is no monitor, then a pointer attached to the camera can be lined up with the
puppet in each frame. It's not enough to think of the puppet moving around spatially on set,
you have to think about it moving around the actual framing, and the more a puppet relates to
its subsequent position, the easier the animation will read as clean and smooth.
Getting hooked - Dave Sproxton, producer
My interest in models and fi lm started as a child. We're all fascinated by miniature things, tiny detail and
creating worlds - despite everything model railways are as popular as ever. A seminal moment for me
occurred visiting London's Science Museum when I was six or seven, a regular occurrence at half-term.
I can still remember the hall full of model steam engines in glass cases and the entrance mocked up as a
coal mine. What engaged me was a small model display depicting the forum scene from Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar . Its model was four feet long and two feet wide with small fi gures standing on steps. It had
a simple plain background. What interested me was the small lighting console by which both colour
and intensity were controlled. With a few deft moves the whole atmosphere could be changed from
bright day to sombre night or even a vivid red. By today's standards the display was primitive (being
six individual circuits and one master dimmer), but the impact was huge. Pushing a few knobs could
dramatically change the emotional response to the scene purely by light. Nothing changed in the model,
no sound effects, no words were spoken, just the lighting. With another push of a button the scene was
washed by white light and looked boring. The model was crude under these lighting conditions but came
to life as you moved sliders and dimmers. I became hooked with the impact of lighting on a scene and
at home made simple, crude lights changing colours by sticking coloured cellophane over the fronts. I