Members of the New Media Club at Auburn are trying their hand at a different, more tedious type of animation - claymation.
"Dead?Wait! and H.Y.D.R.A made a collaborative EP titled 'Do you hate it yet?' and H.Y.D.R.A did the song, but Dead?Wait! was involved with it," said Charlie Harper, member of the New Media Club and senior in radio, television and film and marketing.
The club is putting together a music video for local musicians Dead?Wait! and H.Y.D.R.A. that has many fans excited.
The characters for the music video are made out of clay, and then pictures are taken of each character in different positions so when they're edited together, it appears that the clay figures are moving.
"The music video isn't just claymation," Harper said. "We've workshopped the idea a little bit now, and we're putting live-action stuff in there just to make it more unique."
The storyline for the music video involves a koala bear going to school and getting beat up by another animal.
"It's very violent and gory," said Derek Herscovici, New Media Club member and junior in journalism.
Creating a claymation video requires a lot of setting up and can be a tedious process.
"You move (the clay figure) and you take a picture," Harper said. "It varies each picture, but you probably take about 10 or 15 pictures a second, so you end up having thousands of pictures for a couple of minutes."
Herscovici said the video is still in production.
"The story is pretty much figured out, but we're building the sets and figuring out the shots because claymation is a very exacting thing and you have to have all the characters move a certain way," Herscovici said.
Harper said building the sets and the characters took the longest to do.
"We've built the sets and we're almost done with that, and I've started to make the main character," Harper said.
Harper said he is familiar with claymation videos from prior experience.
"When you're doing the whole thing by yourself, it kind of wears on you," he said. "You can be working on it for hours and think you got a lot done and then upload it and think 'Wow, I did about 10 seconds.'"
Harper said he vowed not to make the finished product public because he was embarrassed by it.
Yet after working on a short film over the summer with New Media Club president Alessio Summerfield, he had a change of mind.
"I figured I would show some people and lighten the mood and they all loved it, and (Summerfield) talked to me about making a music video," Harper said.
He said he thought this claymation video would be much easier to make because other people were helping out.
Along with the actual music video, there will also be a short documentary. Brock Hanson, vice president of The New Media Club, will be documenting the process.
The New Media Club will put on an independent film festival April 13 at 7 p.m. in Langdon Hall where the claymation music video will be shown.
"We're trying to have it finished at least by January or February so we have time to edit and then show it at the film festival," Harper said.
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