I think starting this class I started to get excited again as I was before I was starting at Full Sail. The last couple months during lockdown have really demoralized me, my classmate, and to an extant the professors. Now that the re-opening has begun (too soon, in my opinion, but that a whole other matter), I was happy to finally be able to have a class where we can shoot projects again and even meet up with classmates with is helpful for both class and life.
Due to the group limit of 3 people and the continuing low access to equipment and locations, I had the idea to make a stop motion video using some of the many Lego figures and some sets I have here at my apartment. For the video, my part was production design, DP, and some directing in that I built (literally) the set that we shot on, set up the lighting and shots, and moved the Lego minifigures on the set. As I write this, we haven’t finished our final video and Jon and Brittany are still editing. Soon we will have some reshoots for missing shots and a couple shots that didn’t work in the edit. If we wanted to be really meta I’d try to get a joke about the Justice League reshoots in there, but that’s too much at this point (just like those reshoots as well, I mean 70 pages of script for the reshoots and cutting a 4 hour movie down to two including those 70 minutes? Insane). I did have some ideas that made it into the script like the Snyder Cut and Crisis cameo jokes, but the script overall is definitely Jon’s.
So far, I think the video itself is turning out very well, despite some communication problems and lack of sleep starting to tear us apart. I’m confident it will all work out though as I think we work well together as a group which is why I sought them out to form up in the first place. Since the film isn’t finished yet I can’t say it’s how I would’ve hoped, but the most recent rough cut left some elements to be desired, though it’s mostly temporary stuff that’ll hopefully all be worked out in the end. So far, though, I’ve learned a lesson I already knew, which is stop motion takes a very long time, but specifically if I do another like this I’d plan to break up the shoot into several more days than the few we used and try to shoot as many scenes in one go as I can and save alternate angles for other days so then I can see a more complete edit earlier on and plan better for the rest of the shoot. It’s also very tiresome and repetitive to shoot a scene several times from different angles in a stop motion.
Anthony Dorsey's Mastery Journal 