Adding movement to the soldiers

i tried to add flexible joints to the soldiers.
firstly i tried heating the shaft of a drawing pin. and i then inserted it into the soldiers arm sockets. this worked however the shaft quickly lost heat and i couldn't afix the arm in time. i then tried using a small drill piece and then a heated pin to create a hole. However the hole was too small to fit onto the drawing pin shaft. With the drill piece i managed to make it fit but the arm and torso had warped with heat so the movement was poor. I think that it would perhaps be worth making a few pieces slightly more animatable. I also tried removing the limbs and using bluetac but that looked pretty messy.

Editing thoughts

i think my piece will have a natural home-made olde worlde feel which is in keeping with the artist and the song content. However i may add a grainy film effect over the top (but not the imovie one as it looks naff). I also feel adding some shots between the main storyline such as my planned shot of a drum etc will help to keep the audience engaged.

Some of my pictures from the stop motion have slightly different lighting between stills, some have a red/yellow/blue tinge. When i watched the pictures put together for the first time it seemed jumpy and flickery, at the time i felt this detracted from the piece but maybe in the context of the rest of my footage it may look better. I could however edit the odd photos in photoshop. i will leave them until i have a final-ish cut and see what i think and what the audience thinks.

I used a frame rate of 25 fps and 12.5 fps the difference wasn't huge, as there is a fair jump in movement between frames speeding up the movement doesn't really add to the smoothness. So a slower frame rate makes my footage go further. The fast frame rate made the shots too quick but i am worried the slower frame rate which looks better may bore the audince, so i may intersperse the shots with other images.

Some stills

One issue with the images is the slight differences in lighting and therefore mise-en-scene. However i think this might have been an unintentional good move, as i want to contrast 'happy' and 'sad' moments in the piece and a change in mise en scene can help to achieve this. Some of my shots a brightly lit and predominately yellow, others dim and red. The yellow has connotations of happiness, the floor of grain shows a prosperous time. the red has connotations of violence and death and the low key lighting help create a sombre atmosphere.

Filming

I have been doing some filming over the last few weeks, i have completed several shots. I have also found as i did last year that many new ideas come into your head as you film. A few of my new ideas include:
-The head rising on a pile of grain
-A shot which follows a ripple in the grain 'sea' - i can either do this shot by attaching the hd camera to a tray and pointing it at a ripple also on the tray and moving the whole tray so it looks like the ripple is moving but the camera and ripple kept the same distance between each other (which is what i want), however the grain wave would be stationary, if i did it in stop motion which would obviously take longer i could slightly adjust the wave between shots to give it more life.
-cutting from the foam head's eyes to real eyes.