We went into this project knowing that it was going to be more difficult because of the relative lack of materials we had, as well as our inability to work together on a larger-scale piece in person. Thus, we decided to make our project’s focus to be more on selling a storyline and explore how we could use video camera angles and clips edited together to make a simple piece of cloth look like it was alive. While putting together the project, we explored two mediums: live puppetry and stop-motion animation. For the live puppetry, Sunjana’s portion, we spent a lot of time exploring how we could use string to manipulate the cloth into a snake-like shape. After realizing that the string guiding the puppet wasn’t visible on camera, Sunjana ended up using one hand to control the “snake” and then having that hand be cut out of the video, so it would look like the “snake” was moving on its own. For Danova’s part of the project, we used stop motion to convey movement so that the creature appeared to be moving  on its own. Starting on the ground, sequences of images where the creature was slowly moved in each frame made the creature appear to move and wind its way around the body. 

There were several changes made to the project throughout the weeks that we spent thinking about the storyline and putting together the final product. It took several in-class brainstorming sessions to come up with the story for our video, and even after we created the storyboard, we ended up making several changes to the actual cloth’s motion. For example, Sunjana wanted to implement an inchworm-like motion for her cloth puppet. However, she found it was extremely difficult to do so while having the movement look fluid and her hands not shown manipulating it, since in order to get the motion she would have to have one hand under the puppet and another hand pulling a string to contract/expand it. Thus, she decided to try experimenting with manipulating the puppet like a snake and keeping her manipulating hand out of the frame. For Danova’s portion, stop motion  and having the puppet stay in place and move properly was a challenge, and it was definitely much more time consuming than expected to shoot and edit so much footage that would end up being condensed into only a few seconds of video.

Finally, when we were deciding on a mark to put on the cloth that would be visible in both “universes”, we experimented with throwing tea on the cloth before realizing the stain wouldn’t show on camera, and finally arrived at using a black tape handprint with the tape we’d both gotten from the Ideate package. All in all, despite the difficulties we faced with our living situations, lack of resources, and lack of face-to-face interaction, we are pleased with how we were able to work together and put together this final product.