Moving Pictures - Reflective Report

Cormac McCarthy Sting from Alex Brown on Vimeo.

My initial idea for the sting was to use the picture of the dead horse from the 'idea pictures' brief, having it slowly decay into the ground. But, after realising that I couldn't use After effects for stop motion style animation very effectively, I changed my idea completely to one which was based on my 'printed pictures' work and which I could animate using keyframes. I intended to use my image of the two characters sat at the table and have the sheriff remove his hat from his head and lower his head down in a solemn gesture, then have the woman put her head in her hands. I would match up the musical soundtrack with each of their movements, a single chord for each one. 

However, I started to think I'd probably find that quite complicated to animate, as I'm not very confident with After Effects, and also that I required something much more subtle to convey the mood I wanted to. There would probably have been a risk of it ending up a little too Terry Gilliam-esque, which wasn't a style that would have been complimentary to the subject matter.  

I decided that the more subtle I made the animation, the more it would emphasise the eerie atmosphere and compositionally sparse quality of my 'printed pictures' images. I actually ended up using a sort of slightly warping zoom effect, akin to the famous dolly zoom effect used by Alfred Hitchcock in 'Vertigo' or Martin Scorsese in 'Goodfellas', more of a cinematic camera trick than an animation really, but I was really happy with the result. I achieved the effect by separating out an image into several layers and using keyframes to adjust the scale and position of each layer in opposition to each other. It worked very well in communicating an oppressive and uncanny atmosphere. I also added a sort of shimmering effect to certain layers in each scene which worked rather well. I had already made the soundtrack by this point (an airy, minimal piece of Americana style music using guitar and harmonica) so I adjusted the pacing of the animation to that and overall they worked really well together. 

Despite thinking what I had made was perhaps too subtle at times, once I added the music it was very much brought to life. In fact, now I think one of the few things I would change about it would be making the movement in the second and third scene even more subtle, more like the first scene. I have also noticed that the fade out begins whilst movement is still occurring between the second and third scene, but in the first scene movement stops before. I also think I could have incorporated the name in a more interesting way, but overall I am very happy with how this turned out, and making the music gave me a refreshing opportunity to indulge in something, other than art, which I massively enjoy.