The Brownie an inexpensive camera made by Eastman
Kodak. This was my Mums.
Okay, so today I would like
to talk about cameras. My history with cameras is bittersweet. When I
was around 11 years old, I was fortunate enough to be able to take an after-school program with somebody from the national film Board of
Canada. ( I say somebody, because I cannot remember anything about
the person. Come on, it was over 35 years ago)
That was my first hands-on
experience with animation, film, and a motion film camera. I was
spoiled, for it was a high-quality 16mm motion film camera. I was naive and thought that is how movie cameras worked and looked.
A few years later when I was
in high school I saved up money from my summer job and purchased a
brand-new super eight film camera.
If any of you have seen the
film by that name, “Super 8”, directed by J.J. Abrams and
produced by Steven Spielberg. Well that is very reminiscent of my
youth. Although I was not attempting to make live-action films, I was
more interested in stop motion animation.
I still remember picking up
the camera, then heading downtown to purchase the film, because it
was not common item. I then painstakingly shot my first stop motion
film with some G.I. Joe's that I had kicking around. The 12 inch
ones, not these small little things that are available now. Then I
had to mail the film all the way to California for processing. About
6 to 8 weeks later, the film was mailed back to me. You have no idea
how excited I was, I could hardly contain myself. I pulled out my
cheap little super 8 movie projectors that I bought from a pawnshop,
and proceeded to screen my very first production.
This is not my original Super 8. I lost that camera some how. I found this baby at a yard sale. $5.
No batteries needed, this camera operated by spring power. You cranked it up with this handle.
My jaw dropped, and not in a
good way. I was devastated, utterly devastated. The film that I had
purchased and sent away to be processed was approximately 3 min.
Long. It cost me approximately $30 plus postage. Keep in mind we are
talking the mid-80s. So that was a considerable amount of money for
me back then.
I felt it was completely
wasted. What went wrong, you ask? Well, the film was out of focus.
You see these cameras, as cool as they were in their day, did not
have anything automatic about them. You had to manually focus based
on physical distance between the camera and your subject. Which meant
you needed to tape measure. These cameras worked really well when
shooting subjects further away like home movies where people were 10
or more feet away from the camera. I had been shooting only a couple
feet away, on a macro setting. This I learned the hard way was a lot
harder to do. So anyway, I bought some more film and tried again, and
again, and again.
I was able to get the films
in focus, but the quality never looked good. I had been spoiled when
I use that 16mm film camera. I naively thought my super eight movie
camera was going to be just as good.
My 16 mm film canister. This was my first animated 16mm film.
I gave up and within a
couple years. I went to Sheridan college where we use professional
16mm movie cameras. After Sheridan I went to Ryerson and studied film
and photography were once again I was exposed to high quality film
cameras, and we had an in-house lab that processed the film for us. (
black and white only, but is film students black and white made us
feel cool)
video cameras had been on the
market for a while, but they were completely useless for stop motion
animation. They were unable to record single frames at the time.
This is my first 16 mm animated film. The first part is the Film Negative then a Reversal was made of the negative. It was then scanned and copied to 1 inch video tape for editing. The whole proses was slow and expensive.
Unlike digital, one can actually see the frames on a film strip. In the good old days we would slice the film with a razor blade to make edits, then pastes the cut strips back together.
when I left film school and
got involved with the film and television industry. Most of the work
that I created was scanned and transferred to 35mm film stock or
Digital Betacam. Both of these technologies were far too expensive
for me to work with at home, on my own projects.
So I more or less had
resigned myself to the fact that I probably would never get back into
stop motion animation.
This is my 35mm film slr. It was my Dad's camera. I used it a lot while at Ryerson. Now, not some much. Nothing is automatic with this camera, no auto focus, nothing, you needed to meter the light and set aperture etc manually. Pain in the butt if truth be told. However a great way to learn photography.
Then the DSLR revolution
happened. I've had a SLR camera for years. An old Pentax Spotmatic.
But I would never have dreamed of using it for stop motion animation,
it would have been far too expensive to shoot on that type of film.
Plus, there was no easy way to work with it once it was developed.
But the DSLS opened up whole
new world, and I almost missed it.
I never really paid a lot of
attention to the possibilities these new cameras offer, yes we had
one in the house. It was used mainly as the family camera for
photographing birthdays and dance recitals, etc.
However, several years ago I
had an opportunity to work in a stop motion studio.
Cuppa Coffee Studios.
This is my DSLR. Bought specifically for filming HD video. I love this camera. It has opened up so many new possibilities.
This was not the typical
type of studio that I usually worked in. Over the last 20 years. I
primarily worked in 3-D computer-generated animation. However, they
needed some 3-D and digital compositors to work on a stop motion
television series called Glenn Martin, DDS. Though I only worked
there for a little over a month. ( short contracts are not unusual in
the film and television industry) in that short period of time, I was
able to see an awful lot of what was going on. I was really
impressed, they had over 50 little studio set up each with a DSLR
camera. The frames were tethered to a computer and sent straight up
to the Digital department where I was working. Remember my story
about 6 to 8 weeks waiting for film to be developed and shipped back
to me. Here the animators could shoot a scene and send it straight to
me as soon as they had completed. I was also blown away by the
quality of the imagery these cameras were capturing. They were not
shooting in the HD video mode. They were shooting stills at the
highest setting much larger than the standard HD frame size, which is
1920 x 1080. I cannot remember the exact frame size but was well
above 4000 pixels or 4K. So for me working with these incredibly high
resolution images, was a pleasure. That whole experience stuck in my
mind. I wasn't ready to go home and start making stop motion film,
nor was I ready to spend a couple thousand dollars on a good DSLR
camera.
Now let's move ahead a
couple years, and a client of mine, that I normally did animation for
requested I shoot some video. Groan. I hate shooting video, or at
least I did. I have owned many video cameras in the past. A VHS
camera, a high 8 video camera, a Super VHS video camera, a DV video
camera, and of even rented a digital Betacam. Yet, I've have never
been satisfied with the way the video looked. I've felt like I've
wasted my money on all those cameras struggling to make something
look decent.
So around 2008 I decided
that I'd would give up working with video. It was just not for me. I
hated it.
However, when this client of
mine requested that I shoot some video I did a little research and
discovered this whole DSLR video revolution, and what was even
cooler, was that a decent camera was not that far out of range for
me. I bought a Canon in 60D, then I purchased a whole bunch of bits
and pieces to augment the camera so it was more suitable for video
work. Things like microphone, a follow focus, a set of rails to hold
the follow focus, the cage to keep the camera safe and attach other
little goodies, a shoulder mount, some handle grips and the map box.
I've never tallied up the
final cost for all this, but it still came in at a reasonable cost
considering the quality of the footage I was able to get.
So I shot a few videos,
delivered them to the clients, got paid. So that was that.
The first project actually
cover the cost of all the equipment. I now owned free and clear a
decent camera, tripods, light stands, lights and various other the
production equipment.
It was more or less sitting
idle in the studio.
Then one day I was
reminiscing about the good old days, this was triggered when my
10-year-old daughter Audrey, produced a stop motion film with our
iPad.
I was blown away, and
inspired as well. She reminded me of what this was all about, why I
got into this in the first place. Audrey produced a short little
film about Smurfs. Complete with a hand-drawn set and lots of tiny
little props that she made on her own. It was just like when I was a
young child except, and this is one big exception, she was not
plagued with horrid image quality. Nor was she forced to wait two
months to see the fruits of her labor. She could take 20 or 30 stills
and then play them back right away. Taking it even further, Audrey
on her own, discovered how to import her stop motion footage into
iMovie and then import music. This child was light years ahead of me.
I almost felt a little bit embarrassed even slightly threatened. I
had spent the last 30 years making excuses for why I wasn't making
stop motion films anymore, “ It's those bloody cameras, nothing but
crap” I would always say. Now I can't say that anymore, if a goofy
device like an iPad can shoot and cobble together a better looking
short film than any video camera, maybe my DSLR camera could do the
same.
With a 16 GB card in my DSLR, I can record almost 20 minutes of 1920x1080 HD video. Very cool.
I have no more excuses, I
have the camera, and even if I didn't own that Canon, there would
be no reason why I couldn't shoot a decent film with any regular
off-the-shelf digital camera. Heck, before we had this fantasy Canon,
(which is not one of the high-end models by the way) We owned a
cheaper camera. A basic point-and-shoot, I think it was eight
megapixels. It would've been just fine for my purposes.
I'll even take it one step
further, I have a new iPhone, no, not the iPhone 5. The camera on
that's is incredible. If I didn't own a camera I could shoot stop
motion film with my iPhone.
So there you have it, a
little bit of my history with cameras, later on in a separate post, I
will get into the finer details of my camera equipment and how I have
set it up to use in my stopped frame studio.
I will also do a fairly
detailed post regarding pipeline, which basically means work flow.
Going from camera to computer and then on out into the world.
I hope this has been helpful
don't hesitate to ask me any questions.
Until next time,
Robert Waterworth
Which really sucks, and I mean really really sucks. Like it sucks the big one if you know what I mean. My immune system has decided for some unknown reason to attack healthy cells and tissue in my body. Mostly around my joints. Lupus is a more commonly known version of this disease. If you had Lupus your immune system would go after organs and tissue around them. So in a way I am lucky. Inflammatory issues involving my joints is a lot less dangerous than inflamed organs. However it still really sucks. My feet hurt, and so do my knees, hips, lower back, shoulders, elbows and most annoyingly my hands! 
