Time for Stop Motion

Yup. It’s been around for a while but this techy world’s making it accessible to the masses. Aphotoeditor posted (here) about stop motion/time lapse and its new abundancy.

Not surprising that we’ll be seeing a lot of it with the affordability, speed and quality of the Canon 5D and the new Red One system. But its the style and skill I’m concerned with.

So, how perfect was it that I ran into Sylvain Dumais as he was putting the finishing touches on his new stop motion promo - The Long Haul.

copyright Sylvain Dumais

copyright Sylvain Dumais

copyright Sylvain Dumais

Sylvain’s been working as a photographer in Montreal and Toronto and has been also making a name for himself in the world of stop motion video for a few years now. Check out his past work here, here and here. Sylvain had the help of Full Serve Productions, Daniel Shipp and his lovely wife Sandy for the Long Haul promo. Here’s what Sylvain had to so say about it.

I moved to Toronto 2 years ago, shot a lot of magazine work the first year, became the guy who can shoot someone in 5 minutes and do great but then I started receiving calls for pretty much only that type of stuff (example: billionaire doesn’t want his picture done but we’ve gotten you 10 minutes, no assistant or light ). I did a cover and feature for ROB with Bell ex CEO in 15 minutes, but I was soon growing unhappy of that type of shoot…

In Montreal I’m recognized for my stop motion but I needed to find a way to put myself on the map here. I think the Long Haul will do the job. My ideal contract, would be something where we produce both print and motion (video or stop motion ) and I have a whole team ready for that. I see stop motion as something really interesting, but there is a lot of crap out there. It’s often used because it’s cool but not used to the full potential of the technique. In the best world I’ll be able to shoot for magazine, do commercial video stuff and advertising photography too.

Combining the two is great as I shot a campaign for Tourism Montreal last year and we were able to do interractive web banners at the same time while shooting the print. It made them save on talents, producers, etc… In a slower recession year, I think I’m onto something. So the answer: I’m seeing myself as both photographer and video dude. Voilà!

I’m curious to see if this is the next hot style that comes as fast as it goes OR does the accessibility of video/stop motion mean the melding of photographer/director aka another reason to shrink budgets. There’s some big questions in here. As a photographer, is it now (or soon will it be) necessary to shoot video to keep up? And how are budget’s going to accomodate the fact that print, online and broadcast will meld into one? Or is this just the nature of photography?

I’d love to see your stop motion examples. Please send links.

Cheerio.