Production - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 281

The quality of the i lm, though, was very kind to stop-frame animation, its grain and general
softness giving a very gentle blur to the animation, and in those rough-and-ready days we
needed all the help we could get.
Editing
The role of editor has changed enormously with technology. With stop motion, where only
a few extra frames were shot, the editor's main role was assembling, trimming and i nessing
the footage. There was not enough spare footage to restructure or shape the i lm creatively. In
Next , there was probably an extra six seconds shot, and Screen Play didn't even have that. With
tight schedules it is sensible to get the i lm right in the storyboards; well, I used to think so.
With most i lms now shot digitally, the editor has so much more creativity, not just in correcting
mistakes, but in rearranging shots, creating new ones out of existing footage, adjusting the
composition of clumsy shots, cloning characters from elsewhere and so on. Usually, editors
work side by side with the director, shaping the i nal i lm, making sure every necessary element
of the story is clear. I confess to have been very precious about each frame, but now I welcome
a dif erent informed perspective and am ruthless about cutting stuf if necessary. Working
alongside editors such as Nibs Senior of Flix Facilities in Manchester for many years, I have
developed a mutual understanding of whether a shot works. Most directors and animators, me
included, will defend a shot, explaining all manner of plot, intention and subtext, but an editor
has the distance from the intimacy of the shot to see clearly. Even though the storyboard has
to be the basis of the i lm, the editor and director together can reshape the i lm, emphasising
its strengths. With the fragmentary nature of stop motion, it is hard to have an accurate feeling
for pacing during shooting. A director animating his own i lm can feel that rhythm, but an
animator locked away on his own sequence of shots is not necessarily aware of the whole i lm;
an editor pulls this all together. Inevitably, this means losing much loved or tricky footage.
Learning to let go is hard, but necessary.
During the fi ne cut are you loath to let the editor cut shots?
JD - I'm a ruthless editor of my work. If it doesn't work, cut it. On other people's movies, I'm
disappointed when an animation scene I liked gets cut.
TB - I generally work with an editor, but because stop motion can take so much of one's time and
energy, I feel it's important to plan ahead via storyboards. There's nothing worse than spending weeks
on a shot, only to have it excised when it wasn't necessary. If shots are planned out, this will minimise
the heartache that comes from necessary cutting. The thing I love about stop motion is that one can
throw in a degree of improvisation. When clicking away one frame at a time (that can be anywhere from
a few seconds to a few minutes between frames), there's plenty of time to refl ect on the performance and
suddenly fi nd a bit of inspiration.
KD - It's hard to let clips go, especially when they've taken days to do. I enjoyed the surprises of
shooting on 16 mm, because you didn't know what you were fi lming. It was amazing when the prints
would come back. So exciting.
RC - Animation is an intensely personal art. We want to see our work on the screen so we have
ownership of that character. That's why most stop motion has more personality … the individual (or