Ennui
Some time ago I did a photographic series called “What the butler saw“. As you may have read, this series was inspired by the mutoscopes of old: coin-operated machines that showed an animation based on the “flip-book” principle, in which you have a shitload of photographs which, when turned fast enough, give an impression of movement.
This differs from the standard stop-motion or frame-by-frame animation techiques in that a) the models are real people, not clay figures or any other type of inanimate objects, and b) it’s done with a regular photographic camera on regular photographic film instead of being shot with a dedicated stop-motion camera, so unless you cut down on frame rate you will find yourself shooting 40 rolls of film for a single minute of animation (yes, 40 rolls of 36 exposures, I did the math).
It looked like suicide and a pointless task, but (or should I say “so”?) I wanted to try it out. My first test is just a 15-second clip of Domino strutting around the Silent Room and doing some things, but I’ve uploaded it because it looks quite neat, in fact, even though there’s no script or story whatsoever. There are some awkward jumps and cuts but I think it only adds up to that “old film” effect I enjoy so much and which seems so appropiate here.
Now that I’ve got a hold of it, I will start working on something a bit more ambitious. I just seem to love wasting my time…
To watch the clip at Youtube, follow this link. I’m not embedding the video because it’s distorted if you watch it at the default size, and embedded video doesn’t include the “minimize” button.
If you want to download the clip at 512 x 672, click here.
