Clockwork animation scene

Clockwork animation scene

[show clip for clockwork animation]

When planning this animation scene, we mind-mapped a number of ideas that would suitably fit our song and genre. We really wanted to play on the lyrics “1234” and as a result, one of the objects we have used is a clock. This is suitable because it has connotations of ‘waiting for love’ and ‘time passing by’ which are along the main themes of our video. It also literally displays the lyrics “1234” as the numbers on the clock face are synced in time with the lyrics “1234”.

Theorist Andrew Goodwin believes that within a music video the visual aspects should illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics.

This theory definitely applies to this particular scene as the numbers are visually being shown as the lyrics are played.

We took quite a lot of frames on a still (not video!) camera to get the most smooth outcome as possible. We took a photo every 5 minutes as the large hand moved around the clock face, the idea being that the hands would wind from 1-2 in one slick action. We created a movie clip out of the stop motion frames using software; iMovie, and altered the total duration of the clip so that it was synced with the lyrics.

However, the final outcome of this scene wasn’t satisfactory. The clock hands moved too fast and really didn’t fit with the rhythm of the song, looking out of place and disorientating.

As a result we have taken screen shots of the numbers (e.g. for lyric ‘one’ visual shows 1 o clock) and placed them in time with the music. This had a more pleasing out come, despite the lack of using stop motion.