Honoring Elizabeth Mitchell: An Animation by Savanna Hill

This stop motion film is just one of many to, hopefully, come. It was a very long process and a lot of concentration on my end to really make these characters move the way I wanted them to. 

In the beginning, this family line had shown lots of character and promise to the city of Indy, but just from Elizabeth Mitchell’s point of view on how her family was when she was a kid just showed a whole hearted and innocent sense to their history. I hoped to show the warmth and comfort that she felt in her childhood in a heartwarming way to give a feel that it's something that has shaped her and her family who they are today. 

The critiquing is really the most important aspect of making something like this. Because no matter how good the idea is, it's about how you execute it efficiently. Every other day I was in here working on the short film, and the entire three hours I was here took me only 10-20 frames of drawing and critiquing. And those 10-20 frames were just to simply move an arm a few inches.

You have to look at it from the viewer's perspective, or whatever audience you're trying to attract. You can also pull people from around you to critique it for better results.  If it’s your own film you tend to see more of the faults and more of what's wrong with it when just looking at it. Which makes critiquing all that much harder, because especially with stop motion you can not just clip, delete, and re-do because of the frame by frame. As soon as something is off by the slightest, everyone will notice. 

I once heard that the best editors are never recognized because they make their cuts and transitions so perfect that no one ever notices. I agree the same way for every film ever created. The process of drawing, filming, and editing each and every frame is definitely tiring and time consuming. But I think it's what you've created in the end that makes it all worth it. And I do also believe that it does take time and practice to produce a film that's perfect. And that just sums how much time and effort is put into this kind of art.

Watch the animation here.