Assignment #3 - Stop Motion Animation

Storyboard 

Storyboard Page 1 of 3 

Panel 1: Paint on the canvas appears. Panel 2: A robed figure emerges from the left and pulls down a transparent curtain. Panel 3: The curtain comes down and the robed figure stands behind it; a silhouette of her is seen. Panel 4: Still standing behind the curtain, the figure removes her robe, fully naked. Panel 5: The nude figure moves off the canvas to the left. Panel 6: The figure reemerges from the right ; two hung curtain sheets are visible in the two upper corners. 

Storyboard Page 2 of 3

Panel 1: One by one she pulls each curtain down from each corner. Panel 2: Once again she stands behind the transparent curtains and caresses them into place. Panel 3: She continues moving to the left, caressing the curtains as she passes. Panel 4: A closer shot of her body shows her moving in from the right ; still behind the suspended curtain, she is a silhouette behind the curtain. Panel 5: Standing in place behind the curtain, she brings her hand up to the sheet and presses it on the sheet. Panel 6: A hand from the audience's side of the curtain then emerges and places it on hers. 

Storyboard Page 3 of 3

Panel 1: The image spans upwards to the figure's face as the hand reaches upwards to her face. Panel 2: This image remands then fades into a bright shade of light blue, until it completely disappears. Panel 3: The texture of the light blue paint imitates fog and mist. Panel 4: The "fog" sweeps in to the right to reveal a faded silhouette of a soldier with a rifle. Panel 5: The image of the solider is more visible for a moment before the "fog" covers him up again once more. Panel 6: The last image is completely submerged in "foggy" paint. END. 

Stop Motion Images Contact Sheet 

Final Stop Motion Animation Result

My stop motion animation focuses on the scene from Apocalypse Now Redux that Walter Murch discusses in Excerpts from Conversations. The scene depicts Aurore Clement getting out of bed, undressing and pulling down the mosquito net around the bed where Willard lies. The scene has very dim lighting and the transparent curtains of the mosquito netting mask Aurore as a very ghostly silhouette. There is a gradual transition from the transparency of the mosquito netting to the transparency of fog in the following scene. My main focus of the stop motion animation was to emulate the ghostliness of Aurore's silhouette and the transparency of the curtains that was really emphasized in the scene from Apocalypse Now Redux. I chose the medium of painting on a canvas and taking images throughout the painting progress because I thought that it was a more interesting approach to reinterpreting the scene rather than creating a direct reproduction of the scene. The ghostliness of Aurore's silhouette and the playful colours from the dim lighting influenced me to choose the medium of paint, as I believed that it would allow me to emulate the spectral atmosphere of the scene while emphasizing instances of transparency. 

Music: "Sol" by Misha Mishenko 
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/kestutis-jonas-andrijauskas/sol-misha-mishenko