Norman McLaren - Neighbours (1952)

I saw this great film from the 1950’s, “Neighbors” back in my first
animation class where Norm MacLaren did stop motion animation with
real people and have wanted to try it ever since. Of course, real
people have more needs than characters made out of clay, such as the
need to get out of blinding sunlight when being forced to stand still.
When Paul and Deidre, of Savoir Adore, met to talk about this idea, I
warned them that it might be a bit painful, but they stoically stood
by and managed to get some great shots. Doing all of the effects
in-camera like this let us easily stay within the budget.

To get a shot of someone, say, hovering across the screen, the subject
just walks in nromally, shooting it like normal live-action. Then we
switch the camera to interval mode and the real fun would beging. The
subject then just jumps in the air, while the camera operator takes a
single frame of it. We repeat that 30-90 times, while the subjects
moves a little between each frame to make the animation happen. It’s
very inexact, and lo-fi, but that’s what really adds to the charm of
the effect.  It’s also very slow, sometimes taking ten to twenty
minutes to just get one shot, which limited the number of times we
could do this during the short shoot day.

Some of my favorite shots are the ones where an object flies through
the screen. To do this, I would throw the object in the air each time,
and then remove myself from the shot later on in After Effects. The
untouched footage, which shows me in every frame is funny, and I was
sad to have to remove myself from the video.

Savoire Adore is a great band to work with, they have a strong sense
of the stories behind their music and what they want to do with it.
I’m still impressed with how hard they worked on the shoot, and how
much abuse they were willing to put up with. They spent all day
barefoot, in serious heat, with us bouncing sunlight in their faces,
flies swarming everywhere, and with glitter being dumped in their
faces, and didn’t complain once.