Sunday, November 11, 2012

B&W Photobooth Animation


I shot a stop-motion animation in a photobooth at Auto-Photo's warehouse in Montreal this May. (You can see details about this here and watch my first two animations here.) I've been slowly chipping away at the huge task of editing it over the last few months. And even though I'm not finished editing, I decided to take advantage of my situation here in Chicago and shoot another.

At A&A Studios there's a beautiful Model 11 photobooth that I use almost daily. I have access to the interior of the booth so it allows me a lot of control over things like paper type, filters, exposure, chemical temperature and strength, which all significantly impact the photos. The booth can run on both black & white and colour chemistry but I chose to shoot this one in b&w, as my others have all been in colour.
 
In preparation of the animation, today I spent two hours removing the old chemistry, troubleshooting problems from the last batch and mixing new chemicals. I won't lie - this is disgusting and potentially very hazardous work. There is absolutely nothing glamorous about this task, I will equate it to changing a baby's diaper. You love that baby but it doesn't mean that you love handling their poop.

Another advantage to shooting this animation at A&A is that I'm not rushed to shoot it all at once. So I've already started on the simpler parts that I can do without assistants. I'm about 10% finished the shooting and probably 2% finished the overall work that will go into it.

Here are some frames from the first strips I've taken. Some are tests and others will be in the finished film.  












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