Tester - clip 3

3. Small gingerbread men walking forwards.

Tester - clip 2

2. Small gingerbread army walking across the screen

Tester - clip 1

On Monday 14/05 I downloaded the images we took on the previous Wednesday, and then splitting the images up into groups. From there I used the programme 'istopmotion' to create 5 film clips from the photographs we took.

The settings were set at 14 frames per second on the recomendation of the tutor. Below is the first.

1. Large gingermen walking across the counter.

Evaluation of Trail Day

These are the notes of our thoughts straight after completing the photography session, and we will have to have a copy with us on the days we start photography properly as it will be important to look back on.

Trail Day - 09/05

Robyn and I thought after making most of the gingerbread men that we should test out some of the sequences before doing it for real, this would allow us time to work out any technical issues.

Here is the To Do List we created for the afternoon:

The first thing we tried to do was get the gingerbread men to stand up on their own long enough for us to take the pictures we need. Our solution was putting small pieces of blu tack on their feet.

It worked really well, however I was afraid that the blu tack would be visible as we had we used large pieces. I then kept halving the amount of blu tack I used until I found the balance between using the smallest amount possible but still having the gingerbread men stand up.

Once the problem of how the men were going to stand up, we need to set up the camera. While Robyn sorted out the gingerbread and took control of the camera and setting it up on the tripod. Before we started the shooting I took a trial shot without changing any of the settings on the camera, it turned out too dark (image on the left), I then changed the aperature and shutter settings giving a lighter picture (image on the right).

After taking the photographs for the test clips, we wanted to check that the pushing gingerbread we made would look as if they were pushing the ingredients that we had just tried moving across the counter. 

 I think they will work really well, we just have to be careful with the blu tack to make sure as little as possible shows.

Baking Day 07/05 - development

From the previous baking day Robyn and I thought that we might want to create our own templates as the cutter we used was a bit larger than we wanted. In the images mine is on the left and Robyn's on the right. Although they turned out okay, we both felt that neither was going to work for us, mine looked too much like a mens' toilet sign whereas Robyn's reminded us of the fat, lazy people from the film Walle.

Making the gingerbread in various positions was easier this time around as we took into consideration what we had learned on the previous baking day. We supported the head of the lying down figure with foil, and as another technique we stuck cocktail sticks into the arms, hoping they would help keep the dough up. We also wanted to have gingerbread men pushing a rolling pin in our storyboard, which means that they have to lean forward in order to get down to the rolling pin and we did this by wrapping foil round a slice of rolled up bread and sticking cocktail sticks in the arms to hold them up. One of the end results seen above on the right was before we decided to stick cocktail sticks in the arms to keep them in place.

As the previous attempts of trying to make the gingerbread sit up failed this was our last attempt. We took a cake tin and greased the outside with butter to help the dough stick with to the tin. However while cooking the dough still slid down on some where the others just folded down. Another technique we tried was using the bread rolls and placing the gingerbread on the edge with the legs dangling down. The results can be seen in second row in the picture on the right, instead of sitting up they roll.

The last part of the day was taken up with working out the decoration for the gingerbread men. We agreed that for the buttons the larger men will have smarties and the smaller men for the army will get buttons made using icing. Also what started as a cover up of a crack the 'dickie bow' is now going to be a feature.

Baking Day 02/05 - first experiments

After Uni on Wednesday afternoon Robyn and I went shopping for the ingredients before heading to my house to start the baking process.

All was going well, until we were ready to roll out the dough and I went to get the gingerbread man shape cutter out of the draw to clean it ready when I realised the cutter was missing. From there we went on an extensize gingerbread man cutter hunt, that entailed going to Robyn's house the to two supermarkets and then finally an After School Club before finding a cutter big enough.

The one and only big cutter we found was a girl gingerbread, which was fine, it's just we had not thought of having a  girl army. Our first effort was to have the gingerbread sit up. Not sure on how to do this we first tried cookie the gingerbread and while it was still hot from the oven bend it in the middle. Unfortunately that turned out to be too late as the picture above shows the gingerbread still snapped in half giving the effect of a shorter torso.

Our other successes shown above are 'carrying gingerbread' which is on the left with the arms up by the head, the only thing to consider is perhaps having the arms thinner. The last two pictures are for the posing by the clock in the cooking sequence, one worked really well the gingerbread that is leaning however the last one wasn't that good. We wanted it to look as if it was lying with the head resting on its hands. Unfortunately the bottom of the arms didn't rise as the head stopped it so we need to work out how to fix it.

To make a leg go forward we thought about adding something underneath the dough to lift it up. First of all we tried a piece of baking paper folded up but found it put a kink in the leg, so we tried tin foil. This was much better allowing us to taper and mold the foil to give a more gradual lift to the leg. It worked so well that we used the technique for other positions. 

Unfortunately the outcomes were a disaster as seen to the right. The arms in the top picture of the pushing gingerbread didn't work as they became squished and looked like fat stumps. The second image is supposed to be of a gingerbread man sat up, however the technique of just having the tin foil didn't work as while cooking the legs dropped down on to the torso as they weren't supported to stay up.