Saturday 28 May 2016

Hundreds of Photos: Stop Motion

Today was quite possibly the best Digital Immersion day I have had to date.  We were set with the task of creating a stop motion movie to teach our learners an idea or concept.  I chose to create a stop motion based on beach safety and rips, as it will fit into our aquatics inquiry.  


Whilst the movie doesn't look like much, it took a lot of planning, creating and editing!  An important lesson I learnt is if you are using a newer model iPhone, take the 'live photo' capability off before you start taking pictures.  I got a big shock when I uploaded my photos onto my mac and discovered every image was a 3 second clip!  But with some playing around I found a way to turn the live photo off and upload it using iPhoto Library (instead of the Photos app that pops up automatically).


Creating my backdrop


To create this stop motion I first created my beach scene by taking photographs of my 'waves' crashing onto the shore.  After uploading the images to iMovie, I changed the duration of each image and saved it as a file.  I then created a new iMovie and imported the clip of my waves crashing. Next, I copied the clip, and changed the second one to 'reverse', as I wanted the waves to roll in and out.  Then I copied the two parts and pasted it numerous times so that the waves would be continuously rolling in and out throughout my clip. Then I saved this as Beach Scene.





So. Many. Photos!


Next came the task of taking photographs of my characters with speech bubbles.  This took a lot of time.  I first created my 'green screen' background and foreground.  Next I wrote out all the speech bubbles.  Following that, I began taking photographs of my characters and the speech bubbles. I took over 200 photos, making slight movements of my characters and the speech bubbles.  After this I uploaded my images from my phone onto my computer, and then onto iMovie.  


I then had to adjust the speed of some of my photographs.  This took a lot of time because some of my speech bubbles had a lot in them, so I needed to make sure my learners would have enough time to read them.  After this, I saved the iMovie and labelled it 'Green screen'.



Next I had to put it all together.  I created another iMovie and imported the Green Screen and Beach Scene files.  I placed the Green Screen file on top of the Beach Scene, and changed the overlay to 'Green/Blue Screen'.  At times you could see the creases in the paper of my background/foreground and stick I used for the speech bubble, so I had to fix this using the eraser tool. Lastly, I added a sound clip.


And it's finished!


There are a few things I am unhappy with (like the occasional finger and watch strap making an appearance on screen and that I didn't quite place the green screen and characters in the perfect place), but overall I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. It was lots of fun and I thoroughly enjoyed the challenges that arose when creating a stop motion movie.


Enjoy



10 comments:

  1. Wow Chelsea the effect of the waves looks great and the speech bubbles! Thanks for sharing your tweaks too.

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    1. Thank you Fiona. It was so much fun making this stop motion thank you for an awesome Digital Immersion day!

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  2. Chelsea! This turned out awesome, just shows what perseverance and determination can do. The green screen worked out well, and the speech bubbles are very effective. I will definitely be using this later in the year when I cover beach safety, well done :)

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    1. Thank you Georgia :) it definitely did take a lot of perseverance and determination! Thanks for all your help with planning of how I could make my idea work. That's awesome that you could use it for your teaching :)

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  3. Wow, what a great resource and video Chelsea - I really like the wave effect and the speech marks look awesome. Will be great to hear how your learners react to this! Thanks for the tips and reflections in your post too, very useful!!

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    1. Thanks Heath! It will be interesting to see what they make of it, but I am sure they would prefer this over reading paragraphs!

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  4. This is fantastic Chelsea. I love the effect of the waves - that must have taken ages to create! The kids will love this movie and the messages in the form of speech bubbles will help them make a strong connection to the learning :)

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    1. Thank you Robyn! It did take a long time to create, but it was a lot of fun :) I hope they enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

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  5. What a super example of Stop Motion Chelsea. You have already developed a lot of skills in movie making and the workflow you described to make this was spot on. I enjoyed seeing what you have created and are capable of doing. Tool kit coming up from you I hope :)
    Dorothy

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    1. Thank you Dorothy! I am loving the opportunities to get creative during digital immersion and have discovered my passion for creating movies :)

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