Incident on Theta 7
Our young friend, involved in the Himalayas/Yeti movie, came back to
make another movie on a snowy and cold February morning in 2015.
He brought props and ideas but no story for a movie that could be made in a couple of hours. We supplied the latter.
It took about an hour to set things up and adjust the lights for the
main scene. Then he bravely sat there for over an hour and took the 57 photographs for the shot. We took the other shots later in the day after he had gone home. Sound effects, music, voices, and motion graphics were added in the days that followed. As slow a process stop-motion animation is, post-production is even slower.
 What horrors have been unleashed?
Each photograph of the main scene is shot with low (white) light, supplied by small IKEA LED desktop lamps, and black light from Walmart CFL bulbs. Shooting at a slow shutter speed with low white light and black light
makes the neon green and neon orange LEGO parts appear to glow. Each frame of the shot requires the following:
- Turn on the (bright) work lights so we can see what we are doing
- Adjust the minifigures and set as required for the new frame
- Turn off the work lights so the scene is only illuminated with low white light and black light
- Take the photograph
Then the process is repeated again and again and again.
The first time we shot a scene like this we manually switched the work lights off and on. Thereafter we bought a computer controlled light switch that works with our image capture/frame grabber software.
We like lighting a scene like this because it is more cinematic. Normally when we light a scene, we do it bright to emphasize the colours and printed details on the plastic toys.
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