Animating Elements for a Music Video

Hello all fellow stop motion lovers, Dan here with another update. I did this project around a year ago now, but it's nice to finally be able to talk about it.

I received an email from director / editor Nick Light asking if I would be interested in animating some green screen elements of cassette tape for a music video he was currently directing for the artist Mystro.

Once I said yes we had a good conversation discussing the amount of shots needed, how long each one will be, what the tape will be doing in that shot and the camera angles. With that understood it was time to start planning the shoot. I converted my basement into a small studio space. With the camera mostly shooting down. This would change if the shot need to be from a drastically  different angle or required props to be animated on and around such as a table leg.

Now you would have thought that the hardest thing to get hold of was the cassette tape, but thanks to good old PoundLand that was sorted in no time. The hardest thing was to decide on was how it should be animated. In tests I found that the tape would move and completely change shape with the slightest touch, not good for animating with.

I did a number of test to stiffen up the tape trying sprays, glues, wire and animating in reverse. To an extent all these test worked, so it was decided on a shot by shot basis on which of these techniques would work best for it. 

It was now time to start animating. Now as I was animating the elements on a green or blue screen it was important that I got the camera angle and  direction of the tapes movements were correctly otherwise it would not match up in the edit. To do this I got a still shot from the live action video and using the chroma key tools on stop motion pro I lined up the camera to the image.

I shot the 11 3 to 10 second shots in around a week in between working full time. The only major  problem I came across was the dreaded light flicker. After talking to the director about this it was decided not to worry as it only effected the background never the tape elements.

Here are the final green and blue screen elements. Light flicker and all.  
And here is the final music video.
Hope you have enjoyed this latest post and as always your comments and feedback are very welcome.

Till next time!