Documenting The Doing #4: Bowie Bits

Our fourth video task was to create yet another animation inspired by the talented David Bowie. The mission of this production was to create a stop-motion animation, just like the Problematise/Solutionate movie, taking a photo of different sequences to eventually create a short movie. I was paired with the lovely Jemima for this task, and I suggested she picked the song as I was not familiar with any of Bowie's work. Jemima suggested Space Oddity, and the reason for this was the hint of a countdown in the background. Deciding to play on this, we created a scene of space within a box provided. A miniature version of David Bowie in a funky costume that we chose would fly in on a rocket and land on the moon! The countdown would then take place in the background, with big cut out numbers moving from left to right at the back of the box.

Editing the video was the trickiest part of this whole production as we had to try and get the countdown of the music spot on with our countdown that we created during the picture-taking period. We tried on numerous occasions to match it all up so it was perfect, but unfortunately didn't succeed. From 10 to 4 the countdown was spot on with the music, but after this, we had appeared to have taken less frames as we were short of time, so the music couldn't keep up with the actual footage we captured.

This has taught me that when I come to do this sort of thing in the future I will try and spend more time on the main feature of the production (which in this case was the countdown) and attempt to make it match to the best it will, and to the best of my ability. Overall, I really enjoyed this project and again, I feel this has given me an insight on animation and editing for the future, and I really look forward to doing another project similar to this.

Cheerio. :o)

- Olivia.