Museum of the Moving Image Assignment

As a fan of anything that screws with my perceptual abilities, the Museum of the Moving Image was quite a treat. The installation I was most drawn to was a demo where the museum-goer could create their own stop motion animation video. For the un-initiated, stop-motion animation involves photographing the action one small movement at a time. The photographed frames are then strung together in a sequence that creates the illusion of continuous motion.

In the demo, a user has a designated area that they can photograph with a camera above. By pressing a button after moving objects in front of the camera step-by-step, they gradually create a series of frames that the computer creates a movie from. For my movie, I had a friend hit the button while I drew a character on a piece of paper, drawing a new part for each frame. Thus, an illusion was created where my sketch “drew itself.” I learned that I could make the “motion” choppier – and, in my opinion, more visually interesting – by asking my friend to press the button twice for each frame. Having him press it three times increased this effect, while a single photograph per frame made the motion much more fluid and realistic-looking.