Practice & tests

A couple of months ago I put together the set from 'till death do us part' and had a little practice with the puppet from it. The first shot I just did without anything in mind. For the 2nd shot I wanted to try some follow through on the hair as I didn't really get a chance to test it on the film. The 3rd shot I wanted to animate something elegant.
Another reason for doing this was to test my set up at home to see if there would be any problems shooting my own projects.I am also a portrait photographer and have recently acquired a 600w light it also has a 200w modeling light which I wanted to see if it was powerful enough to shoot stop mo with. The main problem I thought would arise was flicker and it did but I soon solved that by changing the shutter speed on my camera. So its pretty cool that I can use my light for photography and also stop motion. Another bonus is that it came with barn doors and a honeycomb grid so I can shape the light quite effectively.

Youtube link

I also wanted to test out my tripod head to see if I can do some manual camera moves.  I have a Manfrotto 128RC Micro fluid head.

It is very very sturdy for shooting film with so I wanted to see if it was up for the job of stop motion. I found that is is very suitable for the job the only thing I need to do is to make some plates with markers on so I can tell how far it I need to move it. Awesome!!!
These moves are quite fast as I only had a short time to do them.

Youtube link