Evolving into Stop Motion - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 10

Mr Sullivan as a fairy in front of Big Ben. Ah, animation!
a position that resembled its original position, perhaps moved a millimetre along. The brain,
or rather the audience, didn't see the eye fall and roll around; instead, it makes a connection
between the two positions of the eye and assumes that it has moved the shortest distance
between them, and physically moved from the i rst position to the second. The phenomenon
of persistence of vision, where the eye/brain holds onto an image for one-eighteenth of a
second, helps to link the old and new images, especially if the objects overlap. It connects
them, and makes the presumption that the object has moved. We ignore or confuse this
presumption to our cost: it needs all the help we can give it.
Messing with time
The mechanics of a puppet's arm may fold in on itself during the action of a long scene, so
needs to be straightened out, or maybe the puppet itself needs to be physically removed
from the set altogether and maintenance work done, or the original puppet may have to be
replaced by an identical one, all in between the exposed frames, but as long as
the next frame suggests a movement forward, and a close relationship to the
previous frame, then the audience is none the wiser to the behind-the-scenes
trickery and activity that has taken place. In Screen Play , most of the i lm took
place as one long continuous take, so I had to engineer it that the main puppet
would walk behind an on-set screen, and then be removed, repainted and have
any maintenance done. It would be replaced on set, walking out of the other side