Practising making our Drama #2

We are now at the stage where we are just eager to start filming. But we need more practise and with this in mind we attempted to make another Stop Motion Animation movie. It is crucial we get the practise so we are confident in our abilities when it comes to the real thing.

Things were very different this time round mainly because we had Lego. Also we booked the photography room where the actual filming of the Lego animation will take place. This has advantages as we will be able to set everything up much quicker as we've had practise. We used the same lights but this time we used four instead of three to get rid of all the shadows. We also used the same camera and method as last time round. However the filming took place on a small stage a few center metres above floor level so everything had to face downwards. We had to cover the floor and walls with green screen so we could change the background later on Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0. The same rules applied as last time, as Zack took the shots and I moved the Lego. It took just under an hour to film and was harder than last time as there was more objects to move and because they were so small they kept falling over which was a pain as we couldn't put it back in the exact position. In some shots I used blue tack to hold up certain objects that were flimsy this was good as you couldn't see the blue tack and it worked effectively. After filming and putting the movie on Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 we could see there weren't as much problems but there was one main one. Firstly we still had the shadow problem but that was because there were several other people in the small room with us practising but obviously in the real thing we will be filming alone. Another small issue was you could see the green screen line going across the film. But again in the real thing we would tape this down so you wont see it. The big problem we had though, was the camera going in and out of focus. This wasn't Zack's fault as he didn't no, but we now realise that to avoid this we have to keep changing the camera focus every time an object moves towards or away from the camera to get a clear picture.

This is the link to the second practise we did:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts85OZaZLW4

After practising for a second time I can see we have improved but also encountered new problems so we must be aware at all times if we want our Lego animation to be a success.
Overall I feel more and more confident with the more practise we do and I am looking forward to filming the real thing as it will be a new and exciting experience for us.