Quick Post : Stop Motion

A cinematographic phenomenon that I find incredibly interesting is one revolving around stop motion. Everyone knows what stop-motion is. [If you don't, think claymation, like Nightmare Before Christmas, or take a look at this Switchfoot music video to see an example of non-claymation stop-motion.

When people use claymation, they want the motion to be as fluid and life-like as possible, generally speaking, evident in Nightmare, Corpse Bride, and countless other [and non Tim Burton] films and shorts. I would think that's pretty obvious. Sometimes, when a director wants something to look like stop-motion, they remove a couple frames and make it look choppy. Then it dawned on me, while watching this Regina Spektor music video, that even if a director is using stop-motion*, like in this video and the Switchfoot one, they want it to look choppy, the obvious implication being that, if the stop-motion were too fluid, the audience would lose the effect of the stop-motion and see the film as another, traditionally filmed piece.

*I know for a fact that the Switchfoot video uses stop-motion. As for Regina Spektor's, I'm fairly certain that in this video they use a lot of real photographic stop-motion, particuarly so in the beginning, as well as the film-then-remove-frames technique, though I could be mistaken, as animation and stop-motion are not actually my strong points.