"Together"
A short claymation film highlighting the importance of togetherness and working as a team.
The Inspiration:
I was in a meeting at work when it hit me how much effort goes into building one single integrated chipset. There are so many teams and sub-teams and mini teams within those sub-teams that make the technology we have today possible. Together, we really can do anything! I set out to create a short claymation film capturing this concept because playing with clay is fun and Covid had ruined any potential plans I might have had with my friends.
Working Together for What?
This was a critical question when developing the plot for the film. It would definitely be boring to watch a video of a bunch of claymation characters thinking in front of their computer screens, writing scripts, and debugging circuits.
The problem these characters were working together against needed to be compelling and interesting! This is precisely why The Monster was created.
Who are the Heroes?
This brought me to the next question --who are the viewer's rooting for? As is the case with most good stories, The Monster needed to seem undefeatable. Additionally, in this situation because the goal was to highlight working together, a single hero definitely couldn't defeat the monster on its own.
I decided to make our heroes look as cute and harmless as possible against the monster. They were shaped out of tiny balls of clay with two little lines for eyes.
How is The Monster Defeated?
The Monster definitely needed to be defeated by teamwork, so I decided to have all our tiny heroes literally join together and become bigger and fiercer than the monster itself. This would be both visually interesting and a nice twist in the story.
I wanted the last word remaining on the screen to be "Together" since that was the intended emphasis of the film.
Filming:
Frame-by-Frame
I used the Stop Motion Studio Pro iPhone application to create the video. A phone stand was used so that the images remained steady and the video was then pieced together frame-by-frame. Multiple frames were deleted because my hand was in the image.
Stop Motion Studio Workspace Setting the Framerate
Adding Sound
Since I had the pro version of the Stop Motion Studio app, I was able to add the appropriate sound effects in the app itself.
Trimming Sound Clips for Final Video
Editing the Video
The original video was much darker than I had intended. This was due to the fact that I don't have much experience with lighting during filming. I was able to counteract this by adding brightness and the Vivid filter while editing the video on my phone.
Unfiltered Video Filtered Video
