The Importance of Stop-Motion

“There’s always a certain beauty to it, yet it’s unusual at the same time. It has reality. Especially on a project like Nightmare, where the characters are so unreal, it makes them more believable, more solid.” (Thompson, 1993, pg 9)

This quote is from Tim Burton talking about the medium of stop-motion animation, during the filming of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

Stop motion is similar to cell-animation, where images are layered up on clear sheets of celluloid and photographed, different layering’s are then created and photographed so that when played back at speed a character looks like it is moving. Stop Motion works along a similar principal; an animator sets the scene and photographs it, he then moves the character slightly and takes another photograph. When repeated 24 times, this makes up one second of final animation. Although Stop-motion animation may seem like a relatively new filming process (last 20years) but it in fact predates cell animation. (Thompson, 1993, pg 14)

Production companies started using stop motion in the seventies and eighties to produce special effects, such as Industrial Light and Magic in Star Wars (1977), The Terminator (1984) and Robocop (1987). Aardman Animations got in on the action of stop-motion and in 1990 won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short film, with Creature Comforts. Now the multi million pound company is world famous for its Wallace and Grommet stop-motion animations.

Stop-motion is the chosen media for our MA project this year, telling the story of The Magicians Nephew by CS Lewis. We really like the beauty that comes from carefully crafted stop-motion animation, as Burton says in the above quote; it has beauty but is unusual at the same time (Thompson, 1993, pg 9).  It’s made from reality but looks magical- inanimate objects coming to life on camera. It therefore fits well with our project, particularly as the look we are going for is that of highly textured surfaces which you automatically get from stop motion artistry.

It does however come with its own challenges and considerations that need to be accounted for. In one article Tim Burton, whilst talking about the Nightmare Before Christmas, says that although he loves the medium it does present challenges for filming. For one, the audience, he says, can “become overwhelmed by the technique and get distracted from the emotion” (Thompson, 1993, pg 8). So it is important not to let the media take over the story, at the end of the day the medium should assist with the storytelling and enhance the audiences experience, not distract from it.

Another factor that needs to be considered is the strength of the sets where filming occurs. During filming sets have to be strong enough to not only hold the various props and characters but also some of the puppeteers themselves. In a Nightmare before Christmas it was not uncommon to see animators lying down on the sets as they adjusted their characters (Thompson, 1993, pg 147).

Animators need to be able to reach their characters to animate them so on the nightmare before Christmas they divided the bigger sets into smaller sections, having secret doors and openings for the animators to come out of so that they wouldn’t have to reach more than two and a half feet to animate something. (Redmorgankidd, 2009)

Filming moving camera shots can also provide problems. To film panning shots or camera movement­­­­­­­­ involving tracks a new approach is needed. In a live-action film the camera could just film as it moved on the tracks but in stop motion the characters still need to be adjusted so the camera movement has to be considered. To do this one technique is to decide upon the length of the shot, then from this calculate the exact number of frames and then marking these frames as little notches on a piece of tape showing the camera path. After each frame is captured the camera can be moved to the next notch on the tape. When played back, the camera and characters should fit perfectly in sync. (Thompson, 1993, pg 149)

To make a character speak required each animator to have a supply of different facial expressions, so that when put in sequence the character looking like they were talking or singing. (Thompson, 1993, pg 17) The process is long but the final piece benefits from this well loved process.

I think Stop-motion is an amazing medium for filming in, particularly fantasy films, as Burton himself said “It has reality. Especially on a project like Nightmare, where the characters are so unreal, it makes them more believable, more solid” (Thompson, 1993, pg 9). I think this could also be said for the characters of Narnia.




Redmorgankidd, 2009. The Making of The Nightmare Before Christmas (2/3). [YouTube video] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rAATOXkd5pU [Accessed on 23/07/12]

Thompson, F (1993) The Film. The Art. The Vision. Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. Disney Editions, New York