Our video!

[Patches]

Ok so one day about a month ago Christian and I got bored and decided to start making a stop motion video. It turned into this huge project that ended up taking hours a day for a whole week to get as far as we did. We aren't even half way done yet (we kinda took a break from it) but I'm going to put on here what we have done so far. We kinda just want opinions on how we can make it better and what not. We know it really doesn't make any sense, but its not supposed to. Basically we just want to know if its too fast, too slow, annoying to look at from choppiness, or basically whatever opinions we can get to make the rest of it better.

http://www.vimeo.com/4687662

P.S. ignore my messy room please ><

Edit1: I don't know why I typed the exclaimation in the title, it's annoying me to look at. xP

Edit2: I forgot to mention there is one part we couldn't figure out at the time so we left it blank basically, sorry for the random pause toward the end.

[iAmDewgong]

The jacket thing was coolz : >

[Doppleganger]

It's rather surreal to see someone so much younger than me drive a car. I dunno, it just feels really strange since I can't drive at all.

Video was addicting for some reason. I credit the spontaneity and film style. :O

[Tyranidos]

The video was cool =o

I, too, liked the jacket part the most.

[Patches]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

It's rather surreal to see someone so much younger than me drive a car. I dunno, it just feels really strange since I can't drive at all.

Funny part about that is that it was actually his car, I don't even have my license. I have my permit and will be getting my license on June 2nd.

[Vran]

In the beginning, the motions are less complex and the still takes are more numerous. The result is a more fluid, convincing stop-motion product.

Conversely, towards the end, you attempt fun and sassy poses or moves but don't seem to have thought them out fully. Even if this is an unfair/rude assumption, it definitely seems to be the case that you took much fewer photographs, resulting in much fewer still takes which could be used for the finished product. It creates jerky, confusing motions in which the two of you seem to "teleport-move" rather than either move or teleport.

Ignore the 2nd paragraph's length. I loved the video and am very impressed by it, especially if it's a first attempt. Rock on. Keep up the good work.

[Lady Kuno]

Wow holy crap. Kick ass.

[Vran]

I just noticed that you are welcoming tips, so to take things just one step at a time, I noticed that you guys seemed fond of the "air go-kart" technique. If you really want to pull this one off, my advice would be to picture what positions you need to be in to make it look like you're really on a hovercraft or "air go-kart." The goal in these films is fluidity. Think back to Sesame Street as a child: the reason the man seemed like he was sliding across the grass was because of two things. First of all, they had a LOT of still takes. Second, he kept his legs and feet in the EXACT SAME POSITION in each shot. Toes pointing at the same angle. Heels too. Knees. Thighs. Everything was identical in each shot. The result? Your brain told you he was sliding along a moving sidewalk like you see at the airport, except he was on the grass. And that's what made it cool. To capture that in your films, thus, you're going to want to try your hardest to recreate the exact same pose(s) in each still take for a given scene. The more fluid it is, the better you'll be able to mimic the awesome go-kart technique.

But the thing is? I'm pretty sure you know this and can do it. It looks like the main problem you guys had was lack of pictures (resulting in jerkiness) and not inattention to detail.

Once again, great job!

[Amras.MG]

I thought it was awesome

[deoxys]

Thanks guys for the encouragement, it is really appreciated.

Originally Posted by Vran

I just noticed that you are welcoming tips, so to take things just one step at a time, I noticed that you guys seemed fond of the "air go-kart" technique. If you really want to pull this one off, my advice would be to picture what positions you need to be in to make it look like you're really on a hovercraft or "air go-kart." The goal in these films is fluidity. Think back to Sesame Street as a child: the reason the man seemed like he was sliding across the grass was because of two things. First of all, they had a LOT of still takes. Second, he kept his legs and feet in the EXACT SAME POSITION in each shot. Toes pointing at the same angle. Heels too. Knees. Thighs. Everything was identical in each shot. The result? Your brain told you he was sliding along a moving sidewalk like you see at the airport, except he was on the grass. And that's what made it cool. To capture that in your films, thus, you're going to want to try your hardest to recreate the exact same pose(s) in each still take for a given scene. The more fluid it is, the better you'll be able to mimic the awesome go-kart technique.

But the thing is? I'm pretty sure you know this and can do it. It looks like the main problem you guys had was lack of pictures (resulting in jerkiness) and not inattention to
detail.

Once again, great job!

Thanks for the advice. I do agree, it would be much more fluid and smooth if we took more pictures and stayed in the same position. With some things, it was more choppy or not as fluid because either a. we got lazy (won't lie) or b. in the outside pictures it was actually very coldand in some it was actually raininf and you can't tell, ao they were done sort of fast.

One thing we did do though is, if you watch the video over again a few times, you'll start to notice some things flash by you may have not noticed before. Almost subliminal, but more like easter eggs. Or if you don't feel like it, you could just watch it frame by frame instead.

It's still a work in progress. But everyones advice will definitely help out as we continue it, and hopefully we can continue to make more.


On a side note: Fuck YouTube and UMG. The two partnered up and are cracking down on videos with music in them, and muting it completely or will censor the video by not showing it. AMVs and many, many other videos with copyrighted music in them are being blocked, which is why we turned to Vimeo. The only other option was to use a cover version of the song as it isn't detected by YouTube's music matching program, but it's not the same. So, why block random videos but not popular ones like Numa Numa and RickRoll (which actually was muted for a while)? I predict YouTube's slow downfall once people realize, hey, what gives? /rant

(...and that's a discussion for another thread...)

[The Morg]

They have a music matching program now? I wonder if it can be thwarted by adding random noise.

::somewhat tempted to sneak music videos past them::

[Patches]

Well if you do and it works, I must know. Of course, YouTube caught the song even though it wasn't even the whole thing. It was actually very frustrating it took us a long time to remember our alternative (really he remembered and I'm just taking credit xD). This is our first time ever doing anything like this, we plan on making AMV's in the future (if my desktop will ever stop being grouchy) and we prefer to upload to YouTube but we probably won't be able to (depending on the songs) because of it.

[Vran]

Tactics that would probably fail:

• adding interrupts. The program probably scans for multiple random 2-second segments.
• adding unmodulating background noise. The program should be intelligent enough to siphon out constants like these.
• changing the pitch, speed, or both. Don't even bother.

Tactics that would probably succeed for the time being:

• adding modulating background noise.
  • A simple-but-effective approach would be to merge two song tracks together, where Song 1 is the main song and is at x decibels and Song 2 is the BG noise and is set to x-1 to x-2 decibels. This would work best if Song 2 was your own song and not another copyrighted song, since (with a little patching to the software) the program could get around this tactic if you used two copyrighted songs. However, this would not be an ideal tactic since it would frustrate too many people if Song 2 was audible.
  • Another approach that might prove to be somewhat less annoying would be to add concert background noise. Clapping, cheering, singing-along, that sort of thing.
  • A third but much more tedious tactic would be to add audio spikes every 1.0 seconds. The spikes would have a duration of less than 0.1 second. They would be combined with, and not masking, the original 0.1 second of the song that you put them on top of. The spikes would have a frequency that is either subsonic or supersonic. However, this tactic is not advised since the program, if it doesn't already, could easily be written to rule out noise that is outside the range of human hearing. Furthermore, this approach could cause undue stress to pets in your household.

Really, though, I think that none of these approaches are good. They are simply delaying the inevitable. In the end, you won't be able to put copyrighted music on Youtube without obtaining prior authorization from the copyright holder. Whether this is unacceptable or not will determine whether you continue to use Youtube or not.

For the record ... duh. It's difficult to remember the internet before Youtube, but a quick look at its Wikipedia page reminds us that Youtube has only been around for 4 years. Yep: 2005. I think the world can survive without Youtube.