The history, evolution, and creation of stop motion photography
What is stop motion photography?
Born in the late 1800’s, stop motion breathed new life into the media landscape. As a filmmaking technique, stop motion photography involves capturing inanimate objects frame by frame. Small changes between the images are orchestrated by the creator, and when the images are edited together and viewed in a sequence, the frames create an animation that depicts motion. The first stop motion video is attributed to Albert Smith and Stuart Blackton, who created The Humpty Dumpty Circus in 1898. Initially, stop motion was mainly made with figures and models, but today, the technique of stop motion has expanded to include humans (often called pixilate animation) and computer-generated images. While stop motion is used in feature length films, the technique is also popular in shorter length videos, including YouTube videos, commercials, and cartoons. Though the term "stop motion" seems specific, it encompasses many different forms, including claymation (or plasticine animation), cut-out animation, and time lapse photography.
In dedicating this project to the history, evolution, and creation of stop motion photography, I want to address:
1) How does stop motion combine still life and (the illusion of) motion? What are the effects of this relationship?
2) To what extent is this medium effective in communicating story, tone, and emotion?
3) What are the strengths and limitations of stop motion?
Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (also known as The Horse in Motion) by Eadweard Muybridge (1878)
Beginnings of Stop Motion Photography
Stop motion photography represents the intersection between photography and film, so in analyzing the birth of stop motion, we must look at motion photography. Eadweard Muybridge's set of images Sallie Gardner at a Gallop was commissioned by railroad tycoon and former California governor Leland Stanford, who wanted to know if a horse ever became fully airborne when it galloped. Stanford commissioned Muybridge, an English photographer known for his work in motion photography, to capture the truth. Muybridge's succession of images, later known as one of the first captures of animal locomotion, showed that the horse did indeed have all four hooves off the ground as it galloped. This set of images marked a new purpose for the medium of photography: to capture truth through technology. Muybridge's technique paved the way for future animators, and also showed photography's ability to capture the illusion of motion.
Untitled by Ottomar Anshütz (1884)
German photographer and inventor Ottomar Anschütz was also one of the pioneers of early motion photography. He invented the 1/1000 of a second shutter, enabling photographers to capture more "unseen" motion than ever before. Anschütz also invented the electrotachyscope in 1887, which was then a new technology that enabled the illusion of motion with transparent serial photographs. Unlike Muybridge and Anschütz, who identified themselves with the subject of photography and presented motion through a series of discrete images, Étienne-Jules Marey was a first and foremost a physicist whose analyses of motion are defined by multiple exposures on a single photographic plate. In this style of photography, the trajectory of motion was represented in a one image.
Harold Edgerton was a photographer known for adopting the style of Marey's presentation of motion. He is perhaps best known for his work Milk Drop Coronet (1957), a revolutionary stop-motion photograph that showed the impact of a drop of milk on a table in a frozen frame. Together with his other works (above), Edgerton furthered the revelations of Muybridge, Anshütz, and Marey's work by showing that photography could enhance people's understanding of the physical world.
Milestones in Stop Motion Animation History
Motion photography's rise to prominence sparked the birth of stop motion animation. Creators began working on stop motion short films, which led to the development of numerous techniques, styles, and overall progression in the field. Though by no means comprehensive, below are some significant dates in stop motion animation history.
1898: The first known stop motion animation is created - Albert Smith and Stuart Blackton's Humpty Dumpty Circus.
1902: Thomas A. Edison's Fun in a Bakery Shop is the earliest existing stop motion films, depicting a baker who has a bit of fun shaping some dough into a face against the wall.
1907: Edwin Porter's "The Teddy Bears" is another one of the earliest stop motion films. Though just over a minute in length, it took over 50 hours to animate.
1916: The first female animator, Helena Smith Dayton, begins experimenting with stop motion. Her film Romeo and Juliet was released in 1917.
1925: Willis Harold O'Brien's use of ball-and-socket metal armatures, like in The Lost World, define stop motion animation as a refined art form. The film included 49 prehistoric animals.
1930: Wladishaw Starewicz conveys satire and a knack for slapstick comedy with his films, a well-known one being The Tale of the Fox.
1940s: Hungarian animator George Pal used replacement animation to produce motion.
1964: Arthur Rankin Jr.'s and Jules Bass's Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer (for example) showcased their specific stop motion puppet process, also called "Animagic".
The Tale of the Fox by Wladishaw Starewicz (1884)
"It's a process that dates back to the dawn of cinema, with a charm and a warmth and a beauty that other forms of animation — wonderful as they are — do not have. And because you effectively have one shot to get it right, every shot is a high-wire act."
Travis Knight, stop-motion animator and producer
Modern Day Stop Motion
Nowadays, stop motion is used in a variety of ways — it can be mixed with live action, claymation, and 3D technology, among many other styles. It seems that the laborious process of stop motion photography is precisely what gives the technique a sense of uniqueness. In this modern day and age, where everyone can use their smartphones to record smooth and clear videos, the ability to visually see the effort that goes into making a piece of stop motion animation is captivating. While traditional films require 24 individual frames per second, 4 frames per second is enough to achieve a clear stop motion effect. Each frame is captured and projected sequentially to communicate the illusion of movement, and the patience and attention to detail that it takes to create stop motion photography garners the medium respect. Though simple in concept, the practical creation aspect is much more intensive.
In my personal investigation of stop motion videos, I came across three distinct categories. The first was one akin to the original style of stop motion, only depicting the moved object in every frame. The second involved human hands, which served to support the motion aspect of the story, and the final style involved using metaphorical representation and abstraction as concepts to communicate (Fresh Guacamole). While I originally wanted to incorporate all three types of techniques that I saw within the current realm of stop motion, I eventually only focused on the first two types of stop motion for my creation portion of this project.
"There is a a soul to the stop motion process that is special. That comes from the tactility of what you are working with."
Brad Schiff, stop-motion animation supervisor
Creating Stop Motion Photography
To explore the creation process of stop motion, I decided make my own stop motion photography so that I could better understand the practical and tactile components of working within this medium. As someone who has always been enamoured by food instruction videos, I decided to make my own how-to guide for a simple dessert: an ice cream sandwich. Using stop motion to communicate the process of making food was also an interesting juxtaposition to me; while most food videos tend to streamline the cooking process by making it more straightforward and seemingly simpler, the inherent style of stop motion photography brings back the labor and the tactile process of creation to the audience's attention.
To incorporate the techniques that I consistently found in short (1-3 minute) stop motion videos, I decided to split my project into two main parts.
The first part depicted the ingredients and tools needed to make the ice cream sandwich (cookies, ice cream scoop, ice cream). To capitalize on what I believed to be an inherent "fun" aspect of stop motion, I decided to give life to the inanimate objects by having them move through the space (the yellow background) as if they were characters in a film. For this portion of the project, I moved each object between frames, and filmed them so that they were travelling in and out of the screen. This process was definitely time consuming, and I learned to understand Knight's quote regarding how each shot is a high-wire act. Because of lighting and setup issues, I had to redo the image sequences several times to ensure that I had enough shots to work with.
I decided to adopt time-lapse and pixilation (mentioned previously — the use of live actors as a frame-by-frame subject) techniques for the second part of my how-to guide. I recruited a friend to be my assistant, and had her demonstrate how to make the ice cream sandwich as I took the images with my camera. Dealing with melting ice cream was difficult, but I found this part of the video making process to be easier than the previous section as I personally didn't have to stop and reposition objects between every single frame.
The post-production process was one of trial and error. Due to inconsistent lighting, I had to edit almost all of the images so that the color of the yellow background remained somewhat similar (I really did try). The ability to batch edit using Lightroom, however, streamlined the image editing process. I hope that the complete image sequence was able to communicate a sense of fun and whimsy.
Still from How to Make an Ice Cream Sandwich by Mabel Lui (2019); click the image to see the full gallery of 219 photos!
Final Thoughts
This project has given me the opportunity to learn more about stop motion photography through both research and practice. Though my experience with the technique is still very limited, I feel that I was able to gain a somewhat holistic understanding of stop motion. Investigating the beginnings of stop motion (The Humpty Dumpty Circus, Eadweard Muybridge, Ottomar Anschütz, Étienne-Jules Marey) gave me insight on bridging the gap between photography and video, while milestones in stop motion history (introduction of ball-and-socket metal armatures, satire, slapstick comedy, puppets, 3D, etc.) allowed me to learn more about how stop motion has grown extensively throughout the years.
I think that the technique of stop motion lends itself particularly well to light-hearted videos, because the style brings attention to the different frames as opposed to the fictional world that the film inhabitates. As a result, the audience is less likely to become deeply invested in the emotional gravity of the content, and are able to view stop motion videos with a degree of separation. While the attention to the discrete frames can be misconstrued as a limitation, I view it as a strength — because the audience might not be deeply emotionally engrossed in the storyline, they can focus on the illusion of motion and fun time-related trickery at play. This aesthetic strategy makes the inherent tone of stop motion videos playful, and the style itself makes stop motion videos easy to watch, especially with its fast pace (quick succession of images).
Nowadays, stop motion can still be seen in current media. Modern feature length films that use stop motion animation include Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), The Lego Movie (2014), and Isle of Dogs (2018), while shorter length stop motion videos can be found on YouTube in abundance (see this fruit and vegetable video, Distortion by Guildies, and this food play compilation). Different platforms lend themselves to different purposes — while films cater to large global audiences, YouTube videos can appeal to more niche audiences and play with more conceptual storytelling techniques. People may view stop motion as a dying art form, but I believe that its engaging and eye-catching style makes stop motion videos endlessly appealing. By giving still-life objects the chance to have an animated life, stop motion is — and will continue to be — effective in communicating a sense of lively magic that is rare and difficult to achieve through technique alone.
Bibliography
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“A Brief History of Stop-Motion.” Focus Features, Comcast, 19 June 2012, focusfeatures.com/article/a__brief_history_of_stop_motion.
Dennis, Zach. “A Short History of Stop-Motion Animation.” CutPrintFilm, 26 Sept. 2014, cutprintfilm.com/features/history-of-stop-motion-animation/.
“Milk Drop Coronet | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time.” Time, Time, 100photos.time.com/photos/harold-edgerton-milk-drop.
“Please Don't Stop: 6 Beautiful Examples of Stop-Motion Animation Storytelling.” Ceros Originals, Ceros, Inc., 29 June 2016, www.ceros.com/originals/please-dont-stop-6-beautiful-examples-stop-motion-animation-storytelling/.
Rossell, Deac. “Ottomar Anschütz.” Who's Who of Victorian Cinema, www.victorian-cinema.net/anschutz.php.
“The Horse in Motion | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time.” Time, Time, 100photos.time.com/photos/eadweard-muybridge-horse-in-motion.
Welk, Brian. “A Timeline of Stop-Motion Animation History, From 'A Trip to the Moon' to 'Isle of Dogs' (Photos).” TheWrap, TheWrap, 19 Mar. 2018, www.thewrap.com/a-timeline-of-stop-motion-animation-history-from-a-trip-to-the-moon-to-isle-of-dogs-photos/.