Spangler Studios Blog

One day last week, I spent more than a few hours trying to hook the little video feed camera up so I could see through the viewfinder of my Canon DSLR. This Unibrain Fire-i Board Camera is what I had been used to working with at Handcranked Productions, so I did some refresher tests at their studio to see which version would work best for me.

Unibrain offers 3 different Board Cameras (unlike the regular webcam they sell, these come with the camera board separated from the rest and the lenses and cover are optional). There is black and white, color and raw color. The problem with the color cam is that the images are not very crisp. This is because, from what I’ve managed to glean from the Unibrain informational downloads, the video signal can only provide one piece of information per pixel, which is perfect for monochrome cameras. But for a color image, three pieces of information are needed (YUV). A quote from Wikipedia: “Y stands for the luma component (the brightness) and U and V are the chrominance (color) components.” So groups of neighboring pixels carrying different pieces of color information must be merged to get the full color information, resulting in reduced information overall. Anyway, here are two comparison images. The monochrome was taken with an 8mm lens, the color with a 12mm lens (which gives a wider view, but cuts off the image a little at the edges!).

This obviously wasn’t the most scientific test. I should have used the same lens for both cameras to have a perfect comparison, but I think you can see how the color image is noisier than the monochrome.

So I ordered a monochrome camera, as well as an 8mm and 12mm lens. The 8mm lens has an IR filter, but the 12mm does not. I emailed a very helpful fellow at Unibrain support, and he informed me that “an IR filter allows only visible light and not close IR. With a lens without an IR filter you would want to avoid IR, Halogen and sunlight as these could damage the CCD chip.” So I had already purchased a small clip-on halogen light to try using on set. I wonder if even this little amount of halogen light would be damaging to the sensor?

The next challenge was connecting the little camera to the DSLR, a common dilemma I believe. I actually managed to get it in place with some bits of hardware laying around my studio (an amazing feat). At one point I became very frustrated and grumpily told my roommate that I felt like MacGuyver on a bad day, as I was attempting to shave down toothpicks to fit alongside the metal bar I had stuck into the camera’s flash hot-foot. I got the basic idea thanks to Nick Hilligoss on stopmotionanimation.com. Here’s a link to the discussion (with pictures!).

Here’s my version (until I get a little hotfoot adapter in the mail and attach the rig to that, which is probably safer for the camera):

I should note that the Board Camera I ordered came with an opaque gray case, with no attachment point on the back, as shown in these photos. This translucent case with attachment was given to me and was taken from a regular color Unibrain Webcam. Maybe Unibrain would be willing to substitute, or maybe I missed the option for this on the sales page. As you can see, this extra little piece of plastic was very helpful for this rigging situation, and even provides some rotational adjustment for the camera, which so far seems like a good thing, but since it can’t be tightened and secured, this could be bad if the camera were ever bumped during shooting.

Oh, and while I’m talking about things attached to the camera, I should point out that the lens on this camera is a manual 52mm Nikon lens, connected by a Novoflex Lens Mount Adapter, specifically for connecting Nikon lenses to a Canon EOS body. This is a method a friend of mine has been using successfully, and so far it has worked perfectly on this camera too.

Hello everyone, it has been a very long time since I’ve last posted. I’ve almost forgotten how to post movies the right way.

Anyhow, I’m sure some of you have already heard of the new stopmotion framegrabber program for mac systems called Dragon, which is currently in Beta testing. Anyone can download from the site : www.dragonstopmotion.com and post comments to their discussion board. This program includes features not available in FrameThief, such as a handy “short-play”, a fancy 3-step toggle, an inviting black background and direct interaction with many DSLRs. This means you can exercise some control over your DSLR within the same program as your live feed and preview images from within the program. Dragon will also kindly organize your folders and frames for you, creating multiple takes, recording information into a digital, printable X-sheet, and even provides assistance with handcranked camera move calculations - something I’m excited to try out.

So if you want to be involved in the creation of this lovely tool, check it out now while it is still being finalized.

Here’s my little test movie for your enjoyment:

Quick note: for the purpose of sharing what I am currently reading and learning (the simplest way possible), I have added a section to the right with recommendations. Inspired by Shelly Noble’s “cool find” recommendations on her blog, Notes from Halfland. What would be really cool is if she kept a page with all her past cool finds, so one could catch up if they had just arrived at her blog.
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Last weekend I was back in NYC, this time not for work but for personal development. I participated in an intense three-day performance, singing and meditation workshop called Another City led by Ben Spatz (website: www.urbanresearchtheater.com ). There were six other people, all from various backgrounds but with at least some experience in performance or singing. The meditation was not something we did separately, but seemed to be at the core of everything we did, without this being a spoken fact.

Over the three days, during our exercises and experimentations, we were encouraged to begin by finding first our own internal centeredness (again, without this being something spoken outloud, but that was apparent in what we did), then exploring our individual methods of expression, then relating our physical expression to the environment around us, followed by altering our movement and awareness to join with another person’s movements, and then with the movements of the entire group.

Each evening we would take what we had learned into the streets of the city, first attempting to blend in with other pedestrians, then finding a suitable space, we would “perform” our movement and singing structure in a way that was not aggressively directed at passerbys, but so that we could still be observed and heard.

What was interesting about this experience in relation to stop-motion, was this particular style of performance, of which we were just touching the surface, but that I could feel was a very powerful method of connecting with an audience. From what I experienced, it seemed that what was at the heart of this method was that the actor (or animator?) gets to a place where they are feeling something, experiencing something within themselves that is also not shut off. There is an awareness generated that is apparent from the outside, and this visible internal awareness is what an audience or viewer would be drawn to and be able to connect with, as if they were experiencing the movement, the scene and the mental state of the performer through the performers eyes.

Normally I am not comfortable when moving and making noise in a way that draws attention to strangers, but because of the way our comfort zones were gradually expanded during this workshop, and because we quickly formed a strong supportive bond as a group, I was able to relax and be expressive in the moment (though I have no idea what I looked like from the outside!). What I’m wondering, since the main focus of this blog is stop-motion animation, is how can this expressiveness and genuine awareness be applied to the slow performance of an animator?

I’ve often said that stopmo animation of a puppet is a meditative experience, or that it must be somewhat meditative to be successful. Still, I so often lose that connection with the puppet when the movement gains momentum in the wrong direction and it all becomes a mathematical scrambling to save the shot.

I think it could be very helpful to do more improvisational animation with a puppet, where the focus is conveying the awareness of the puppet. This would also probably require the least possible amount of watching the framegrabber playbacks. If you haven’t seen it yet, I felt very connected to the awareness of my screwhead test puppet in this improvised test where I made a strong effort to stay with the puppet and not get caught up in the external view as seen through the camera and computer playback:

Before I sign off, I would also like to add a note about how I became interested in this performance workshop. After coming across the website for urban research theater, I was able to read some of the personal observations written by Ben, and these writings are what drew me to wanting to learn more about Ben and his work or his methods of performance, and what led eventually to me signing up for the workshop. Just recently, in the August newsletter, I felt an especially strong connection to what he wrote about creating proper foundations when learning and discovering your own work, truly understanding it and what you are doing. To quote a section:

“…I want everything to be clear. No muddy steps. I catch myself stopping work on a particular thing, because it is difficult, and moving on. Okay, it’s not the end of the world, but I will make a note to go back to it. Nothing will be left undone, nothing will be skipped. Nothing will be created that does not have a solid foundation. I am tired of doing and seeing theater that does not know what it is made of, that does not know what it is. We will discover or create what performance is for us.

There are different kinds of knowledge, different levels and depths. It is not just a matter of doing but of process. When you discover something through your own searching, you own it in a different way than if someone teaches it to you. That’s why the creator of a craft, someone like O Sensai, is always on a different level than even the first generation of students. There is something unique in quality that comes from discovering your own work. It comes from thoroughness, from having to go down every road, reaching every dead end and turning around before finally discovering the way through. Ultimately this depth of understanding is irreplaceable…”

He was talking about theatre, live performance, but I feel the same way about film and animation, and feel that this speaks very directly about the creative place I am now and what matters to me now. Earlier this month I had even been discussing with friends how I felt that a natural progression of self-motivated and self-directed learning is what was lacking from my own understanding of film, animation and art in general, and that I was finally getting around to learning what I really needed to learn.

So, time to get back to the learning and say goodnight to the computer!

ps: to people who have left comments, if I haven’t yet responded, please forgive me as this has been a busy time, and thank you for writing. I love reading what you have to say and it encourages me to keep posting.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted.

I just wanted to show the recent stop-motion work I did in June. This time it was for a website, something I’d never done before. It was interesting to see how stop-mo could be used on the internet. The company that made the site is called Honest and the site is for the Comcast commercial characters, The Slowskys (they are turtles). Anyway, when you go to the site, click on “Roof” and you will be taken to the Rube-Goldberg style fortune telling contraption that I animated. The guys at Honest did a great job at removing all the ugly rigs I had to use to animate the multiple flying objects, and I think it’s pretty funny. The only thing I would change is the sound effect for the rope-snapping towards the end.

Here’s the link: www.theslowskys.com

Recent clarification: I should clarify my post by saying that I was only the animator and rigger for this sequence. The large furniture piece that makes up the site, as well as all the props and elements for the Roof scene were built by Fangohr, www.fangohr.com. Design was done by Honest.