[INTRO MUSIC]
MATHEW AMONSON: I think
what really attracts
people to stop motion is
the sense that there's
something real there.
There's a real object there.
And there's people
who made that.
JEREMY BRONSON: And then even
discovering how it's made
doesn't necessarily
kill the magic.
For me that's inspiring.
MEAGAN CIGNOLI: Stop motion has
a very playful quality but also
the element of surprise.
HAYLEY MORRIS: Stop
motion appealed to me
because you can make
your own characters.
You can make your own sets.
You can make your own
world that's in your head.
DEAN KALMAN LENNERT: Basically,
if you have the fortitude
to move it, you can use it
for stop motion animation.
Stop motion animation is the
art of manipulating objects
and photographing them in
single-frame increments using
a motion picture
or a digital camera
to create the
illusion of movement.
You can use anything
with stop motion.
It could be either
puppets or clay
or sand or paint or people.
Now, the process
of shooting, let's
say you're doing some
puppet animation.
You'd have a table top set.
You're going to walk
over to the puppet,
and you're going to put
it in its first pose,
go back to the computer
and hit the key
to shoot off that first
frame or first two frames.
And then the process
repeats like that.
Historically, the first
stop motion film made
was done by a British animator
named Arthur Melbourne Cooper
called Matches: An Appeal.
And that was in 1899.
There's two histories.
One is the European history,
and one is the American history.
The European history
is stop motion being
used as a storytelling medium.
The reason for this is
historically in Europe
you had puppet theater,
and you already
had this history of people
going to see puppet shows.
In the United States the premier
art form for the 20th century
was cartoons and
hand-drawn work.
And stop motion generally
fell under the special effects
category.
And it was like that until 1993
when Jurassic Park came out.
I know a lot of stop
motion animators
who really felt that that
was the end of the art form.
But anything that's
still done by hand,
and because stop
motion is perceived
as taking a lot of time,
it impresses people more.
When they see something like
that and it's a CG thing,
it's like, oh, OK,
well, that was just
CG rabbits jumping around.
But when they see something
that like, oh, wait a minute,
those were big things of clay
that people were moving around.
That was real?
Oh, wow.
So I think there's
something to be
said for dealing
with real objects
and having something
that's still handmade
in the digital age.
HAYLEY MORRIS:
Stop motion can be
really powerful to get
across serious messages
and important topics
that so many people are
dealing with right now.
Undone is a short
film that I made
that was based on
my grandfather.
And he had Alzheimer's disease.
I didn't really want to make a
literal story of Alzheimer's.
I wanted to explore surreal
and fantastical imagery
to represent what
that must feel like.
I imagined it must
feel like you're
lost in this vast ocean that
doesn't look like a real ocean,
but it's made of fabric and soft
materials that are comforting.
And you see glimpses
of things that you
can't grasp that seem
real, but they're not real.
So you can make these
really surreal images
using so many different
materials like fabric, paper,
clay, string.
I don't think doing
hand drawn animation
or another form of animation
would have really captured it.
For instance, the
puppet of the old man,
I made him out of
string and developed
the idea of the
string becoming kind
of a symbol for
the deterioration.
So as the film goes on,
the string overtakes him.
And you see the progression
of how he's breaking down,
and his mind's breaking down.
And he's trying to
hold onto things.
The opportunities in stop
motion are just endless.
And you can make these
really surreal images
and an emotional
image that I don't
think you could do necessarily
in live action film.
MATHEW AMONSON: When I saw
that scene in Star Wars
when Chewbacca's playing that
alien chess thing with R2D2,
and those toys
moved by themself.
I was, like, blown away.
And from that point on--
JEREMY BRONSON: I want that.
Those are the toys I wanted.
There's something there
that, when you see it,
it's magical, really.
I mean, It's a
physical object that's
moving by itself that
shouldn't really do that.
Something in your
brain, I think,
just says this is so cool.
You know, this is great.
Magic in the real world.
But in terms of putting
everything together creatively,
it's really difficult.
MATHEW AMONSON: A lot
of problem solving,
physical problem solving.
A lot of planning.
For example, the Sesame
Workshop pieces that we did,
that was a long process.
We could say a month
just in the animating.
JEREMY BRONSON: We built this
really large underwater set.
MATHEW AMONSON: And then
the set was for a shot
where the camera follows
down into the water
and we follow one tadpole
back up to the surface.
And that one shot
took us 12 hours.
Yeah.
MATHEW AMONSON: And
just like any actor
would play a
character differently,
you are playing that character,
really, is what you're doing,
only you're doing
it in stop motion.
You have to first act
it out, and then you
have to figure out
how do I break that up
into 24 bits per 1 second.
So you have to hold that
in your head the entire time
and be able to
separate and then come
back right where I left off.
If you get into stop motion,
you realize right away
you're going to be spending
a lot of time doing this.
And you better find many
places inside the process
that you can really enjoy.
Otherwise you're going
to be killing yourself.
MATHEW AMONSON: You find that
thing that makes it exciting.
JEREMY BRONSON: We can,
like, stay in the zone
together and enjoy it.
MEAGAN CIGNOLI: Vine
is fun because each one
is so different.
I can be as eclectic
and all over the place
as I want to be and try out
something new every single day.
The frame rate is so fast that
you can do really great stop
motion on there.
One night I was
taking colored water
and filling up jars,
watching it go up and down
and changing the colors
and that kind of thing,
and I was like, ah,
this looks so cool.
I just kept playing with it
until someone told me what
I was doing was stop motion.
I think something that really
gets people addicted to Vine
is it's almost
like a video game.
Like, all the parameters,
they create rules,
whereas you don't have any
rules when you were just
working with the
camera, like you're
making whatever you want to do.
But with this there's
very clear parameters.
You only have six seconds.
You can't edit.
You can't add sound later,
so if you want to do sound
you have to sync it.
When you want to
record you just tap,
and when you don't want to
record you move your hand.
So you do, like, little
teeny taps and kind
of know your timing
with Vine and get
used to it, because if you mess
up, you have to begin again.
These things take
at least an hour,
if not many, many more hours.
Sometimes you can do
160 taps in six seconds.
I think the reason stop
motion works for Vine
because it's like being
able to show something very,
very quickly.
People's attention spans are
getting shorter and shorter.
And I think people
really love to see things
they don't see every day.
It's kind of magical.
JEREMY BRONSON: It's gotten to
the point where a lot of people
assume that it was made with CG.
But I don't think
it really matters
if something gives someone
an emotional response
and it's working.
HAYLEY MORRIS: It does
take a lot of patience.
But it's really satisfying
seeing your characters and sets
come to life.
MEAGAN CIGNOLI:
All day long people
will tag me in their videos.
And they're like, I
tried stop motion,
or inspired by Meagan Cignoli.
I think a lot of people are
playing with it right now,
and it's exciting.
DEAN KALMAN LENNERT:
For me at moments
it almost goes back
to when you were a kid
and you're playing
with your toys
and you're imagining
that they have life.
You're seeing your imagination
play out in front of you.
[MUSIC]
