The good soldier stop motion
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I set out to make a stop motion that contained a great message would have an impact on people, i wanted to use this opportunity of making a stop motion and make a short story that communicated one of my main beliefs in life and that belief was in the story of the good samaritan.
At first i wanted to take a comedic approach to the well known story but in the end i thought people would give it less value if its too humorous, i decided to take a rather dramatic and emotional approach to the story.
Using the parable of the good samaritan, i wanted to take the moral of the story and use it as an answer to some of the issues society and humanity face eg: gender equality, war, crime and other forms of injustice. the stop motion was supposed to trigger an emotional response in the audience and challenge them into thinking about those issues.
after showing it to a few viewers i am confident that the video did exactly what it was supposed to do, it got an emotional response from some audience members; mostly females, it was enjoyable and artistic to certain viewers eyes and more importantly it got everyone commenting and thinking on its content.
some of the best bits in the stop-motion are the in the det design;
The detail in the set design is what makes it great and gives it's realistic look ,granted the black and white effect does add some flair to it.
My favourite aspect of the stop motion is the street art, some of the art is from the famous artist "banksy", i am extremely fond of them because of their meaning and their contribution to the greatness of the set. they also assist the narrator in telling the story, at the 36th second the narrator says " for he journey'd back home to reconcile with his beloved" as he says beloved, the camera cuts to a shot on a street art thats promotes peace with a rose, it also stands as a double attendre for "his beloved".
My target audience was people of all ages but mainly from the age of 10+, the reason behind the age is because to be able to get the full message, some level of maturity is required. it is aimed at both male and female audiences. the parable of the good samaritan is a story from the bible so another huge part of my target audience was religious people who were familiar with the parable.
my story was an adapted version of the parable of the "good samaritan", the good samaritan is a well known story therefore that helped me achieve my goal of getting people from all age groups and background to watch it and understand it.
street art of feminism
war and peace
love
Peace
I used a variety of sounds from different soundtracks such as : sound effects of crickets, sound effects of the wind, voice over , soundtracks with a soft melody such as "valley exodus from the lorax soundtrack", "king Arthur by hans Zimmer" and aslo sound tracks with a hard melody ( 10000 BC the soundtrack). the most successful sounds were all the soundtracks because they played the vital part of triggering emotions at the right time in the audience.
Public screening questions:
1.what was your opinion on the storyline/narrative, was it easy to understand?
2. What was your opinion on the characters; how they were used and the design?
3. What did you think about the set design and the role it played in telling the story?
4. What was you opinion on the sound , was it used effectively?
5. The colour of the stop motion was black and white ,what was your opinion on it , what effect did it have on you?
6.which are of the whole production do you think could improve?
7. My target audience was specifically from the age of 10+ but overall anyone from any age group or gender could have watched it. Do you think the stop motion did a good job at targetting my audience?.
Public screening answers.
. the common answers about the storyline were : it was very clear and easy to understand, it was great the way the story was used to link with issues society faces, it was thoughtful ,provoking and accessible. everyone thought the story was very thoughtful and relevant to society.
. the common answers about the character designs were : the characters were interesting, they loved how the soldiers wore different uniforms as a way of addressing not just one group of people but everyone. They loved the idea of having soldiers as characters.
my characters were soldiers and the biggest worry was that the female audience wouldn't relate to the characters or the story at all, but during conversations they never felt excluded as a gender and the characters appealed to them aswell as the male audience.
. the common answers about the colours/drawings were: they loved the use of black and white because it added a seriousness to the tone of the animation and it was artistic, effective, different, unique, made the animation universal and unique. i was drawn to the use of black and white as a way of setting up the tone for the stop motion, i was inspired by frank miller's sin city , i thought people would find it boring but everyone loved it, they found it artistic and thought the black and white colour had a great effect on the audience.
. the common answers about the set were: it is well built, it's really realistic, the set told a story itself with the art that was in the background, it did not distract from the characters. what brought an incredible amount of joy to me was when the audience recognised what i was trying to do with the set. numerous people commented on the messages that was in the set design. each picture represented an idea and had a message within it, everyone commented on at least two street arts and how they made them feel.
. the common answers about what could be better were: the voice over could have been shorter , the glue used to stick the soldiers on the floor could have been neater.
. the common answers about the target audience were: the majority of people thought the stop motion targeted a wider range of audiences, from kids, young adults to adults. a number of people thought it was from the age of 12+ and others thought it didn't matter what age or how young because the stop motion contained nothing that was too graphic for younger kids.
I agree with most of the comments and truly am flattered as they were incredibly positive and touching, the only comment i disagreed with was the over use of the voice over, i do think the stop motion would have been without the voiceover and still be great, but that would have made the stop motion less understandable to a younger audience that required the voiceover to get the full message behind the story.
Overall I really enjoyed the opening day public screening , I received kind, productive, interesting and flattering comments on my stop motion. Got to meet incredible people with such artistic views and hade great fun.
I have decided to compare my stop motion to the fan made captain America the winter soldier stop motion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVZftOxIzW0
Granted in the captain America the winter soldier stop motion there is an incredible amount of fight moves and sequences and mine has none but I thought they were similar in terms of character designs. Both my characters and theirs were similar in terms of materials they were made of and the design. Comparing the way the maker of the captain America used his generic conventions and character movement to how I used mine, his video has a lot of movements as it is a fight heavy video and it contains a great number of stop motion principles such as gravity, arc, secondary action and mine only has a few. But in terms of set designs his designs and details in the set dims in comparison to mine, he excelled in the way he used his characters to tell the story and I excelled in the way I used the set as a story telling tool. We had similar soundtracks and used them the same way as they helped triggering emotions in the audience but the additional sound effects in captain America added to it greatly and gave it an edge. Overall both stop motions were good in different ways.
Peer analysis
The audience for my stop motion thought it had a very clear narrative and easily understandable, the reason was because it's from a well known story " the good samaritan".
as they reviewed the character design their words were " sick, ill, badman" in other words, they liked the characters and they were impressed. my stop motion had no colours as it was in black and white, they thought it was an effective and creative choice to have the stop motion in black and white.
they really enjoyed the set design and the set itself , " it looks realistic and creative". their advice on areas of improvement was to add a voice over of the narrator. and their last words were " its target audience is mature people and religious people", they also thought it would have a great female audience as one said " my girlfriend would like this, she likes feminist art".
certify this work as my own
