Finished edit!!

I'm happy to announce that I have finished the editing of the final advertisement! I am so pleased with the final outcome of the video, and think it reflects everything I have planned over the past couple of months since deciding to use lego! I want to show damien, my FMP tutor the finished piece and see what he says, before officially putting it to one side ready for the show case in two weeks time.

Here is the finished video (Theres a 10second black clip before it begins):

Cheeky Preview

I have uploaded 3 individual videos of my stop motion and time lapse lego creations, they are not how they will be appearing in the advertisement they are just the basic stop motion then time lapse videos. I have decided to upload the pirate ship and desert island, (Note, none of the videos have sound as i am in the process of sorting the music at the moment!!):

The Lego Sign:

And the Shop:

I have chosen these as i think they all demonstrate well the theme of the advert and are all different sorts of things that feature in the advert. As the deadline is fast approaching i thought i'd check in and say that there is just the music to go on now and hopefully my final video will be up by the end of this week! 

Hope you enjoyed these sneeky videos and keep on checking to see when the final one is up!!!

Editing Stop Motion with Final Cut Pro

1. Final Cut Pro lets you set a default video size for imported images. We need to set things so that an image is imported to play as 3 individual video frames. This will give us a playback frame rate of 10fps. You can change this number to affect the playback frame rate, but will need to re-import your folder of photos at the new duration if you change it. To set this import size go to the top menu and select user preferences from the Final Cut Pro menu.
2. Select the editing tab (second item) in the user preferences and change Still/Freeze Duration to 00:00:00:03. Click OK.
   
3. Import the folder of images. These should be sequentially named and 720X480.
   
   
4. Double click the imported folder of images. Select all (Edit>Select All) of the images. and drag them to the timeline.
   

This information is taken from: http://mediacommons.psu.edu/instruction/tutorials/importing-still-images-stop-motion-animation-final-cut

I have found it particularly important when importing images to use this process that I found online, as it makes the editing process much easier when putting clips onto the timeline. Not only does it save time but also means I can immediately start editing with the clips rather than having to wait for each one to render ect.

Update!

So I'm feeling as if I should check in with my progress!
I'm not currently at a point where I can upload a video, however I am in the process of editing my final advertisement, Im really happy with the way it looks and really feel it demonstrates my storyboards and visions I had of the advert!
Here are some cheeky pictures from the shoot for a sneaky preview of what the advert entails:

Filming

A week and a half ago I did some practices with my lego mixing it up and playing around with stop motion. I literally was testing out the technique before my filming date last week, so there was no focus on the lighting camera work ect, so as expected there were obvious lighting issues and focus issues in editing but  as I was only testing the technique these are not a problem. Here is the video:

Here's are some problems that I found whilst making the video, and in red are how I plan to overcome them:

A. Movement in the objects.

- I've purchased a baseplate, in which I will blue-tac down and build each object on, therefore eliminating any movement.

B. Time.

- As stop motion is a very time consuming process, I've decided to enlist some help when shooting my final video. I have already asked a friend who has agreed to be my 'button pusher' for the shoot, therefore I can focus on the objects and not have to keep running back and forth from the camera.

C. Sturdiness of the objects. 

- I will need to rebuild some of my objects to ensure they are more sturdy for the final shoot, as during my tester I had some trouble with lego falling apart as i was trying to build up, and this slowed up the process a lot.

Storyboarding

Here are my storyboards for my FMP: Lego Advertisement.
I will be constantly referring back to these during the shoot to ensure I get everything I need for the advert, I have planned to combine stop motion and time lapse as it believe it works well together but also because it is something that Lego does in their adverts. Here is the storyboard:

Storyboarding

Pre-Production Paperwork

Here is my pre-production paperwork for the upcoming shoot tomorrow. I will be referring back to this when setting up my shoot to ensure it looks the way I have planned and get everything I need!

Call Sheet


Location Report



Shooting Order

Equipment List

Production Schedule


Risk Assessment

More Creations

Over the weekend I have booked out the studio to shoot my final advert, this will be taking place on Thursday 9th of May 2012, that will give me plenty of time to edit before the hand in date on the 24th of May. I have also purchased another large box of lego and built some more little pieces for my advert:

My Idea

I've had an idea to create an advert for lego, im going to mix up time lapse with stop motion as I have found out that this is what Lego does a lot when creating videos and commercials!

I have created some different objects out of lego that I plan to build in the advert, here are some pictures of things I have made:

I am really happy with my little creations, however as talking with one of my tutors we decided that I will need to build some more characters and objects to ensure I have enough to fill the advert time, therefore I will build some more over the weekend.

Lego Stop motion Videos

I've looked on the Lego YouTube channel to find out different adverts, and videos they have created using stop motion to get some ideas of what to make.