Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Stop motion animation using clay is called clay animation or "clay mation".
Stop motion in television and movies
Dominating children's TV stop motion programming for three decades in America was Art Clokey's Gumby series—which spawned a feature film, Gumby I in 1995—using both freeform and character clay animation. Clokey started his adventures in clay with a 1953 freeform clay short film called Gumbasia (1953) which shortly thereafter propelled him into his more structured Gumby TV series.
Rankin/Bass is a very famous stop motion company. Since the 1960s it has been making many stop motion Christmas specials such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Year Without a Santa Claus, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and many others.
In November 1959 the first episode of Sandmännchen was shown on East German television, a children's show that had Cold War propaganda as its primary function. New episodes are still being produced in Germany, making it one of the longest running animated series in the world. However, the show's purpose today has changed to pure entertainment.
In the 1960s, the French animator Serge Danot created the well-known The Magic Roundabout (1965) which played for many years on the BBC. Another French/Polish stop motion animated series was Colargol (Barnaby the Bear in the UK, Jeremy in Canada), by Olga Pouchine and Tadeusz Wilkosz.
A British TV-series Clangers (1969) became popular on television. The British artists Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall (Cosgrove Hall Films) produced a full length film The Wind in the Willows (1983) and later a multi-season TV series The Wind in the Willows based on Kenneth Grahame's classic children's book of the same title. They also produced a documentary of their production techniques, Making Frog and Toad.
Another example is Pingu, a children's television program about a penguin who lives with his family in an igloo.
In the 1990s Trey Parker and Matt Stone made two original shorts and the pilot of South Park almost entirely out of construction paper.
The animated series Robot Chicken continues to primarily utilize stop motion animation, using custom made action figures and other toys as principal characters. Other action figures, called Stikfas, are very popular stop motion figures and are not extremely expensive. Moral Orel is another stop motion based show, along with Mary Shelley's Frankenhole, both created by Dino Stamatopoulos.
Stop motion animation is one of the hottest areas of film-making today. Stop motion is an animation art through which one can spring life in inanimate things and do the unnatural. It works by shooting a single frame of an object, then moving the object slightly, and then shooting another frame. When the film runs continuously in a film projector, or other video playback system, the illusion of fluid motion is created and the objects appear to move by themselves. This is similar to the animation of cartoons, but using real objects instead of drawings.
Well, how can you make use of stop motion in web design? Some design agencies integrate stop motion in their showreels, some may use it to present a product or a service. The main advantage of the technique is that it really looks different, unusual and therefore memorable. In technical terms, stop motion consists of many forms according to techniques used to create, animate and film it – pixilation, cutout animation, time-lapse, clay animation and many more. Stop motion animation is time-consuming, repetitive process which requires patience.
filmed
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The process of filmmaking has developed into an art form and industry.
Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating – or indoctrinating – citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue into the language of the viewer.
Films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta movement.
The origin of the name "film" comes from the fact that photographic film (also called film stock) has historically been the primary medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photo-play and flick. A common name for film in the United States is movie, while in Europe the term film is preferred. Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the cinema and the movies.
History
Main article: History of film
Charlie Chaplin (1918)
In the 1860s, mechanisms for producing two-dimensional drawings in motion were demonstrated with devices such as the zoetrope, mutoscope and praxinoscope. These machines were outgrowths of simple optical devices (such as magic lanterns) and would display sequences of still pictures at sufficient speed for the images on the pictures to appear to be moving, a phenomenon called persistence of vision. Naturally the images needed to be carefully designed to achieve the desired effect, and the underlying principle became the basis for the development of film animation.
With the development of celluloid film for still photography, it became possible to directly capture objects in motion in real time. An 1878 experiment by English photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the United States using 24 cameras produced a series of stereoscopic images of a galloping horse, is arguably the first "motion picture", though it was not called by this name. This technology required a person to look into a viewing machine to see the pictures which were separate paper prints attached to a drum turned by a handcrank. The pictures were shown at a variable speed of about 5 to 10 pictures per second, depending on how rapidly the crank was turned. Commercial versions of these machines were coin operated.
Roundhay Garden Scene, film produced using a motion picture camera, by Louis Le Prince, 1888
Ignoring W. K. L. Dickson's early sound experiments (1894), commercial motion pictures were purely visual art through the late 19th century, but these innovative silent films had gained a hold on the public imagination. Around the turn of the 20th century, films began developing a narrative structure by stringing scenes together to tell a story. The scenes were later broken up into multiple shots of varying sizes and angles. Other techniques such as camera movement were realized as effective ways to portray a story on film. Rather than leave the audience with noise of early cinema projectors, theater owners would hire a pianist or organist or a full orchestra to play music that would cover noises of projector. Eventually, musicians would start to fit the mood of the film at any given moment. By the early 1920s, most films came with a prepared list of sheet music for this purpose, with complete film scores being composed for major productions.
Georges Méliès Le Voyage dans la Lune, A Trip to the Moon (1902).
The next major step in the development of cinema was the introduction of so-called "natural color", which meant color that was photographically recorded from nature rather than being added to black-and-white prints by hand-coloring, stencil-coloring or other arbitrary procedures, although the earliest processes typically yielded colors which were far from "natural" in appearance. While the addition of sound quickly eclipsed silent film and theater musicians, color replaced black-and-white much more gradually. The pivotal innovation was the introduction of the three-strip version of the Technicolor process, which was first used for short subjects and for isolated sequences in a few feature films released in 1934, then for an entire feature film, Becky Sharp, in 1935. The expense of the process was daunting, but continued favorable public response and enhanced box-office receipts increasingly justified the added cost. The number of films made in color slowly increased year after year.
In the early 1950s, as the proliferation of black-and-white television started seriously depressing theater attendance in the US, the use of color was seen as one way of winning back audiences. It soon became the rule rather than the exception. Some important mainstream Hollywood films were still being made in black-and-white as late as the mid-1960s, but they marked the end of an era. Color television receivers had been available in the US since the mid-1950s, but at first they were very expensive and few broadcasts were in color. During the 1960s, prices gradually came down, color broadcasts became common, and the sale of color television sets boomed. The strong preference of the general public for color was obvious. After the final flurry of black-and-white film releases in mid-decade, all major Hollywood studio film production was exclusively in color, with rare exceptions reluctantly made only at the insistence of "star" directors such as Peter Bogdanovich and Martin Scorsese.
Since the decline of the studio system in the 1960s, the succeeding decades saw changes in the production and style of film. Various New Wave movements (including the French New Wave, Indian New Wave, Japanese New Wave and New Hollywood) and the rise of film school educated independent filmmakers were all part of the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of the 20th century. Digital technology has been the driving force in change throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. 3D technology increased in usage and has become more popular since the early 2010s
Theory
Film theory seeks to develop concise and systematic concepts that apply to the study of film as art. It was started by Ricciotto Canudo's The Birth of the Sixth Art. Formalist film theory, led by Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs, and Siegfried Kracauer, emphasized how film differed from reality, and thus could be considered a valid fine art. André Bazin reacted against this theory by arguing that film's artistic essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality not in its differences from reality, and this gave rise to realist theory. More recent analysis spurred by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis and Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotics among other things has given rise to psychoanalytical film theory, structuralist film theory, feminist film theory and others. On the other hand, critics from the analytical philosophy tradition, influenced by Wittgenstein, try to clarify misconceptions used in theoretical studies and produce analysis of a film's vocabulary and its link to a form of life.
photographic
Photographic film is a sheet of plastic (polyester, PET, nitrocellulose or cellulose acetate) coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive silver halide salts (bonded by gelatin) with variable crystal sizes that determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film. When the emulsion is sufficiently exposed to light (or other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays), it forms a latent (invisible) image. Chemical processes can then be applied to the film to create a visible image, in a process called film developing.
In black-and-white photographic film there is usually one layer of silver salts. When the exposed grains are developed, the silver salts are converted to metallic silver, which blocks light and appears as the black part of the film negative.
Color film uses at least three layers. Dyes, which adsorb to the surface of the silver salts, make the crystals sensitive to different colors. Typically the blue-sensitive layer is on top, followed by the green and red layers. During development, the exposed silver salts are converted to metallic silver, just as with black-and-white film. But in a color film, the by-products of the development reaction simultaneously combine with chemicals known as color couplers that are included either in the film itself or in the developer solution to form colored dyes. Because the by-products are created in direct proportion to the amount of exposure and development, the dye clouds formed are also in proportion to the exposure and development. Following development, the silver is converted back to silver salts in the bleach step. It is removed from the film in the fix step. This leaves behind only the formed color dyes, which combine to make up the colored visible image.
Newer color films, like Kodacolor II, have as many as 12 emulsion layers,[citation needed] with upwards of 20 different chemicals in each layer.
Due to film photography's long history of widespread use, there are now around one trillion pictures on photographic film or photographic paper in the world, enough to cover an area of around ten thousand square kilometres (4000 square miles), about half the size of Wales.
Film basics
There are several types of photographic film, including:
- Print film, when developed, turns into a negative with the colors (or black and white values, in black-and-white film) inverted. This type of film must be "printed"—that is either enlarged by projecting through a lens, or placed in direct contact as light shines through it—onto photographic paper (which in turn is itself developed) in order to be viewed as intended. Print films are available in both black-and-white and color. Color print films use an orange color correction mask to correct for unwanted dye absorptions and improve color accuracy. Although color processing is more complex and temperature-sensitive than black-and-white processing, the great popularity of color and minimal use of black-and-white prompted the design of black-and-white film which is processed in exactly the same way as a standard color film.
The concentration of dyes or silver salts remaining on the film after development is referred to as optical density, or simply density; the optical density is proportional to the logarithm of the optical transmission coefficient of the developed film. A dark image on the negative is of higher density than a more transparent image.
Most films are affected by the physics of silver grain activation (which sets a minimum amount of light required to expose a single grain) and by the statistics of random grain activation by photons. The film requires a minimum amount of light before it begins to expose, and then responds by progressive darkening over a wide dynamic range of exposure until all of the grains are exposed and the film achieves (after development) its maximum optical density.
Over the active dynamic range of most films, the density of the developed film is proportional to the logarithm of the total amount of light to which the film was exposed, so the transmission coefficient of the developed film is proportional to a power of the reciprocal of the brightness of the original exposure. This is due to the statistics of grain activation: as the film becomes progressively more exposed, each incident photon is less likely to impact a still-unexposed grain, yielding the logarithmic behavior. A simple, idealized statistical model yields the equation density = 1 - ( 1 - k) light, where light is proportional to the number of photons hitting a unit area of film, k is the probability of a single photon striking a grain (based on the size of the grains and how closely spaced they are), and density is the proportion of grains that where hit by at least one photon.
If parts of the image are exposed heavily enough to approach the maximum density possible for a print film, then they will begin losing the ability to show tonal variations in the final print. Usually those areas will be deemed to be overexposed and will appear as featureless white on the print. Some subject matter is tolerant of very heavy exposure; brilliant light sources like a bright light bulb, or the sun, included in the image generally appear best as a featureless white on the print.
Likewise, if part of an image receives less than the beginning threshold level of exposure, which depends upon the film's sensitivity to light—or speed—the film there will have no appreciable image density, and will appear on the print as a featureless black. Some photographers use their knowledge of these limits to determine the optimum exposure for a photograph; for one example, see the Zone System. Most automatic cameras instead try to achieve a particular average density.
History of film
Early photography in the form of daguerreotypes did not use film at all. The light-sensitive chemicals were formed on the surface of a silver-plated copper sheet. Beginning in the 1850s, thin glass plates coated with photographic emulsion became the standard medium. Although fragile and heavy, the glass used for photographic plates was of better optical quality than early transparent plastics, and in early years it was also less expensive, so the use of such plates persisted long after the introduction of film. Eastman Kodak marketed the first flexible photographic roll film in 1885, but this original "film" was actually coated on paper. After exposure, as part of the processing, the image-bearing layer was stripped from the paper base and transferred to a glass support to facilitate printing from it. The first transparent plastic film was produced in 1889. It was made from highly flammable nitrocellulose (celluloid), now commonly known as "nitrate film". Although cellulose acetate or "safety film" had been introduced by Kodak in 1908, it was not until the 1920s that it began to significantly replace the hazardous nitrate film, which had the advantages of being considerably tougher, slightly more transparent, and cheaper. The changeover was not completed for X-ray films until 1933, and although safety film was always used for 16mm and 8mm home movies, nitrate film remained standard for theatrical 35mm motion pictures until it was finally discontinued in 1951.
Special films
Instant photography, as popularised by Polaroid, uses a special type of camera and film that automates and integrates development, without the need of further equipment or chemicals. This process is carried out immediately after exposure, as opposed to regular film, which is developed afterwards and requires additional chemicals. See instant film.
Films can be made to record non-visible ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) radiation. These films generally require special equipment; for example, most photographic lenses are made of glass and will therefore filter out most ultraviolet light. Instead, expensive lenses made of quartz must be used. Infrared films may be shot in standard cameras using an infrared band- or long-pass filter, although the infrared focal point must be compensated for.
Exposure and focusing are difficult when using UV or IR film with a camera and lens designed for visible light. The ISO standard for film speed only applies to visible light, so visual-spectrum light meters are nearly useless. Film manufacturers can supply suggested equivalent film speeds under different conditions, and recommend heavy bracketing (e.g. with a certain filter, assume ISO 25 under daylight and ISO 64 under tungsten lighting). This allows a light meter to be used to estimate an exposure. The focal point for IR is slightly farther away from the camera than visible light, and UV slightly closer; this must be compensated for when focusing. Apochromatic lenses are sometimes recommended due to their improved focusing across the spectrum.
Film optimized for sensing X-ray radiation is commonly used for medical imaging by placing the subject between the film and a source of X-rays, without a lens, as if a translucent object were imaged by being placed between a light source and standard film. Unlike other types of film, X-ray film has a sensitive emulsion on both sides of the carrier material. This reduces the X-ray exposure for an acceptable image – a desirable feature in medical radiography. The film is usually placed in contact with a thin layer of lead which also enhances its sensitivity.
Film optimized for sensing X-rays and for gamma rays is sometimes used for radiation dosimetry and personal monitoring.
Film has a number of disadvantages as a scientific detector: it is difficult to calibrate for photometry, it is not re-usable, it requires careful handling (including temperature and humidity control) for best calibration, and the film must physically be returned to the laboratory and processed. Against this, photographic film can be made with a higher spatial resolution than any other type of imaging detector, and, because of its logarithmic response to light, has a wider dynamic range than most digital detectors. For example, Agfa 10E56 holographic film has a resolution of over 4,000 lines/mm—equivalent to a pixel size of 0.125 micrometres—and an active dynamic range of over five orders of magnitude in brightness, compared to typical scientific CCDs that might have pixels of about 10 micrometres and a dynamic range of 3-4 orders of magnitude.
Special films are used for the long exposures required by astrophotography.
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