Stop! Motion! Stop! Motion!

For my fourth year film seminar I have decided to take on a stop-motion film. But wait! What is stop-motion, you ask. Well, here is Wikipedia's definition:
"Stop-motion (also known as stop-action or frame-by-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."

AKA: a lot of work...and a lot of frames. Oh, what have I got myself into?
So far, this is my canvas... I'm shooting from birds eye view at an art studio. Filming is going stupendously. My poor roomie, Nicky, is getting a bruising from the floor! No pain, no gain right? She's a good sport :)




Of many stop-motion filmmakers, Jan Svankmajer has to be one of my favorites. Svankmajer was trained in puppetry and is dang talented at it. He is a surrealist filmmaker, interested in deep imaginings and dark-minded things. See below for yourself.


Virgil Widrich is also pretty awesome. He is an Austrian filmmaker. Watch "Fast Film" below. It might not appear to be stop-motion, but oh-it-is. Warning: it's unbelievable.