Blog # 3 Production Notes

This process was very interesting and I learned a lot and am continuing to learn. This post will be updated with further notes because I am still working on the project. For now, I will write about the process thus far. I decided to experiment with the art of stop-motion animation. I had created the title of my subject, saying "I love to eat food." I wanted the words to appear on screen in an animation, while his voice was saying these words. I bought letters that were neon and very colorful, some putty, and I used my dry erase board. I set the camera up on a stack of books, because I don't have a tripod, and I made sure that each frame was the same so that it would look fluid. It took me a very long time and I realized that in the future, I know that stop-motion animation is very time consuming. I arranged the letters slowly so it would create movement. Some time later, I realized that I would not use this creation because it would lose its effect if I sped it up to the timing of his voice over of it. I had also created stop-motion animation for the space in the interview where he talks about his budget for food. I rolled up a ten dollar bill and put putty on the bottom of one end of it and then slowly unrolled it for each take. I plan to play it forward and then after that part of the interview is over, to put the shots in reverse order. During lab time, it was a good opportunity to shoot raw footage of my subject. I faced difficulty when, in the part of the cafeteria where food is sold, I was told that no one can shoot there. I used the footage I had taken before I was informed of this. I set him up eating on the table, and paying the cashier. I shot him walking away, which I will use at the end of the video, to symbolize him going off on another food hunt. A lot of my images will be literal associations with the words he is saying. For example, when he mentions two restaurant chains, I will include their images. I feel that this choice most clearly represents the words at that moment, and I don't want to exhaust the audience. At other moments, however, I will use imagery that is not literal. For example, when he speaks about his dislike of the word "foodie" because people who use it feel that they are elite and exclusive, I will use a shot of the British royalty waving to represent an unreachable class and social group. When he speaks of his eating schedule being sporadic, I will rapidly place different images of clocks set at different times to indicate that he doesn't follow a strict regime, but that it is in constant flux. I would have liked to include more footage of the subject himself. However, to my deep regret, he went missing in action and I have not been able to reach him since. I will make do with what I have and don't have, because after all, life is about facing the challenges as they come.