Photo Shoot for GiffGaff Advert

This week, we set up my large green-screen that could fit an entire person on, ready for the photo shoot. We are using pixilation as one of the animation techniques for the advert, amongst stop-motion and some 2D. Me and Harry acted out the roles of the GiffGaff worker and the customer, directed by what we'd planned in the storyboards. We also got help from Bethan, Madgie and Daisy to act out one of the scenes. 

Then we focused on the stop-motion components. These comprised of still photos of found objects such as a phone and a bin.

It also comprised of stop-motion sequences with objects, like stacking coin towers and money coming out of a pasta rolling machine. For the case of the pasta-machine, the spinning handle and the money will be edited together to look like it is happening at the same time

The hardest stop-motion part was the stop-motion sequences that involved pixilation. For one scene, I had to hold a pillow with a phone on it and frame by frame move it off screen. It was hard to keep my hand steady and get the same tilt on the pillow for each frame. 

What Went Well

• The pixilation and stop-motion we've captured is very choppy and fits GiffGaff's style when it comes to their stop-motion adverts
• The coin towers and money coming out of the pasta-machine were ideas that we had after the storyboarding stage but thought they would be good to include
• Apart from the stop-motion sequences, most of the animating will happen in After Effects, giving us more control on how things move temporally (the speed of the motion and when the scene will be cut) and spatially (the composition with other elements of the advert)
• Blu-tac kept the coins in place so they weren't jogged when the next coin was placed on the pile

Criticism

• It was hard capturing the pixilation sequences (my arm would move about too much between shots)
• We won't know whether the pixilation sequences will work until we see them animated in After Effects
• We had to retake the sequence with the pasta-machine handle spinning around as it was too jumpy to understand that it was spinning