When you put your mind to it, it’s amazing what you can do with a smartphone (together with a hundred or so volunteers, a patient actor and a large crane).
Using the above, two directors working under the name of Sumo Science have just created the world’s largest stop-motion animation, shot entirely on a Nokia N8 smartphone. Nokia has promoted the N8 through a number of projects like this, notably Nokia Shorts, a recent movie competition utilizing the smartphone.
Directors Ed Patterson and Will Studd, who also happen to be part of the British Oscar-winning animation studio Aardman (responsible for the likes of Wallace & Gromit), made Gulp on Pendine Beach in Wales, with filming stretching across 11,000 square feet – a record for a stop-motion movie, as confirmed by Guinness World Records.
Studd explains the story of the 74-second short: “Man catches fish. Man becomes bait for bigger fish. Man gets swallowed by bigger fish. Man accidentally sets off chain reaction and gets spat out of bigger fish.”
Sand artists and animation students from across the UK helped to create the scenery using stencils, rakes and a number of props. As it was an animation, the phone’s 12 megapixel stills camera was used, not its video camera.
As anyone who has ever tried making a stop-motion movie knows, it’s a laborious process, with each individual frame having to be painstakingly set up before being captured. It took the crew 16 hours to shoot one 20-second portion of the movie – but we’re sure you’ll agree, the results are very impressive.
What made this particular movie extra challenging was that it was shot outside, leaving the filmmakers at the mercy of the unpredictable Welsh weather. Most animations are shot indoors in highly controlled environments.
See the results for yourself below. For those interested, there’s also a short video giving a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the production.
