Light and Time - Chess stop motion

For this stop motion piece I went into Huddersfield town centre to the chess square.  The chess pieces are free for the public to use, to play a  game of chess with.  I went down with a friend to photograph the game at every stage to make a small animation.  My friend moved each piece one by one, as I photographed each move.  The photographs were then put together as an animation using Premiere Pro.

I am really pleased with this but I did have problems with photographing when it came close to the end of the game.  As the pieces made their way back to the basket, I started zooming in to see the pieces more clearly, but as it got to the last few shots, my battery was running out fast.  To try and preserve the battery while my friend moved the pieces, I kept turning the camera off.  However, by doing this and rushing to photograph the last few pieces, I couldn't get the right amount of zoom I had previously.  This meant that when the photographs were put into Premiere Pro and animated, the last few moved in and out which did not look right.  What I ended up doing was putting all the photographs from the ending into Photoshop and tried to crop parts and resize so that the animation would run smoothly.  However, you can still see slight movement towards the end.  The ending is a bit of a let down for me, as the in/out movement I feel ruins the animation.  Apart from that, I am really happy with the game itself.

Music by The Art Department

Untitled from Rachel J Milner on Vimeo.