Context of Practice 3 - Notes 4 (Stop-Motion Animation; Frame by frame film making with puppets and models, Barry Purves)

These are the notes that I have gathered so far, however I have not finished reading this book yet so I may have many more to come.

Stop-motion Animation; Frame by frame film-making with puppets and models

‘... even a short film demands high resources, patience and unflagging energy. However, new technologies, such as smartphone apps, are making the resources more accessible and students are certainly still eager to work in this oldest of mediums.’ pg 10

‘That these characters exist is one of the main satisfactions, and the intrigue of an inanimate object ‘magically’ moving by itself never likely to lose its appeal.’ pg 10

‘In the late nineteenth - century Paris, George Melies used invisible wire, trap doors, sheets of glass, smoke and complex automata to become a master of spectacular illusion and magic.’  pg 14

‘On one legendary occasion, Melies was filming in the street when his camera jammed for a few seconds. This simple accident changed everything, for him and for us; the jump cut on the developed film had seemingly transformed, through a well-timed substitution, an omnibus into a hearse - a delicious deceit not lost on Melies.’ pg 14

‘This basic technique, of a trick happening unseen, still forms the basis of all stop-motion today.’ pg 14

‘In a Dream of Toyland (1907) and Noah’s Ark (1908) he animated toys and wooden dolls.’ Arthur Melbourne-Cooper pg 14

‘He can claim two other cinematic firsts - the first use of close up, an eye looking through a keyhole, and in Matches: An Appeal (1899) he used animated matches for a commercial.’ pg 14

‘Stop-motion isn’t about mathematics and facts and figures, but it is certainly about performance, tricks, illusions and instincts.’ pg 16

‘That a succession of frames can create an illusion of continuous movement has been, in the past, attributed to a theory called ‘persistence of vision’.’  pg 18

‘The theory is that everything we perceive is a combination of what is happening right now and what happened an instant before, providing a fluid link between successive images.’ pg 18

‘Scientists and psychologists still argue over the theory and precisely how we formulate movement, but what is essential to animators is to help the brain and eye to construct the movement between frames.’ pg 18