Brother “Architect” from Aidan Gibbons on Vimeo.

Brother “Cafe” from Aidan Gibbons on Vimeo.

Noah Harris directs these fantastic Brother spots using a unique blend of stop motion, replacement and time lapse.  Noah has posted some of the test shots on his site. DOP Toby Howell was kind enough to share details of the production.

Toby Howell:

“Dragon was used at all stages of the Brother shoot. The paper animation was tested extensively at the Blink offices by animator Martin Pullen so that he and Noah Harris could pre-plan the studio shoot in advance.

“I shot the timelapse Building Site footage using my Dragon laptop on location and was able to ride the cloudy day exposure using the histogram and differing long shutter speeds. I used Dragon as a lighting tool on all the location timelapse shoots. We also used a heavy duty leisure battery with an inverter as location power for the laptop and camera—I get a good 10-12 hours from this.

“In the studio we had to line up our BG footage with the studio environments perfectly to achieve the Trompe L’oeil effect so I checked my camera and lens measurements with the timelapses loaded up as Dragon layers. Whilst shooting we were constantly exporting quicktimes from the animation passes to check on edit laptops.

“I’m always keen to spec Dragon onto our stop frame shoots as it’s become the industry standard in the freelance animation scene, and animators complain if they get stuck with anything else! Personally I find the Cinematography window essential on set.”