Why I love stop motion film

Making a professional looking stop motion film can be a laborious business, although it doesn't have to be. Traditionally you need an idea, then a storyboard, a time to make the film, materials and skills to build the models and sets, a decent camera, a space where you can film without kids or pets or partners running around ... the list goes on. Why then make a stop motion film? Why not make it CGI? Why not make a film with actors like grown ups do? The answer is simple ... because stop motion is magical, and to the eyes of a child, it looks like toys coming alive ... and it inspires them more than any big budget flick because it's tangible and real. If you make your puppets from plasticine like the guys at Aardman then a you're saying to the child 'look, you've got this stuff in your house, why don't you have a go?' Well, I know i did as a child, but back then we didn't have digital cameras and laptops, it was too expensive and time consuming. But nowadays you can do it with a mobile phone in a spare hour. It may not be a work of art but you'll get something.

Why Not CGI?

Simple really, as I've said above, CGI is beautiful but it is unreachable for a child. Films like Toy Story which I adore do not actually enter the private space of a child's imagination, they don't happen within reach of their fingertips, CGI films are fantasy and entertainment alone. But if you sit down and watch Wallace and Gromit with a child, watch their eyes light up in amazement as they see something that has been made with human hands, like a toy, with fingerprints and imperfections, just like the clay models they make. But also, CGI has other problems, for a start there is too much of it around these days. Films are so perfect and unbelievability detailed that you are no longer amazed by them, you demand this level of entertainment and so one blends into the other, each trying to outdo its predecessor with wonderful effects and tricks. CGI is also incredibly expensive to make and just as time consuming as stop motion if not more so. It requires trillions of gigabytes of memory, and supremely skilled artists. Stop motion can be funny and charming, even it it doesn't flow seamlessly and is full of mistakes (I'm not making excuses for the mistakes in my own film there by the way ... okay, maybe i am a little) they can be every bit as entertaining. It comes back to the point, you can do this in your basement, or your kitchen so long as you can make it dark and build some basic models.

Guerrilla Stop Motion Animation

We've established that it's cheaper and no slower than CGI. So, the next stage is to do stop motion everywhere with whatever you can find.This is what I  really love about stop motion, you  can just setup a film set anywhere and make characters come to life in the corners of your world. Take a look at this picture (right)  It's one of the first Zebraman models I made when I was trying to get a feel for the character. Look closely, yes it's made from blue tack! I made this out of stationary at work, the wire is from a broken mouse, the mic is a piece of foam from some PC memory packaging and the stripes are black tape from the hardware store round the corner. I drew a wall behind it on a piece of a shoe box I pilfered from on of the PA's on the 5th floor and by steadying my camera phone I took a few hundred stills of this thing and made it into a film, and I did this on my desk, whilst answering the phone. Now there's this crazy character doing a stand up routine on my desk in the office. That inspires me, filling the boring places with funny creatures. Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is go forth and animate, encourage your children to do it, use this wonderfully simple form of entertainment to fill the world with funny little stories before CGI displaces whole swathes of our imaginations.