Stop Motion Animation Shorts

Creating with Technology

Our district has recently implemented a mobile 1:1 program. This means that all of our students will have access to technology both in school and at home through the use of school provided mobile devices with 3G.  The students are highly engaged in learning how to use their devices in new ways.  I am highly interested in offering a 21st century curriculum  by encouraging students to collaborate with each other to solve creative problems using technology as a creative tool.

Planning camera angles

Filming in progress

Experimenting

First, we just played. I think it's important to give the students an opportunity to experiment with the media they will be using in depth later. It's also a nice hook. We experimented with several movie making apps and made little movies about scissors moving across the table or pencils disappearing into their hands. Students were encouraged to explore free apps that they could find and to settle on one that worked best for them (that also had a share feature).



Practicing Skills

Some students used the school provided Android based phones (stop motion lite)  and while others used their personal iPads or iPhones (gorrillacam and iMovie) to explore movie making apps. We practiced saving and sharing our work via Google Drive.

Experimenting with ideas

Investigating 

Next, we dissected the qualities of good stop motion animation via several You Tube clips ranging from very amateur to professional. The students developed an understanding of how character development, story, camera angles, frames per second and a stationary camera can impact the quality of a stop motion movie. Blendspace link to all of the clips



Collaborating and Building Community

Testing the background

The students divided into teams and developed plans for their movies. No minimum length was given. No parameters for content were set. The goal was to make a film that could tell a story, any type of genre would do and any method of character development would be accepted. As a first project with a new group of mixed 6th - 8th grade students, this learning experience was as much about building community as it was about building movie making and technology skills.

Building characters

Open Ended Problems

I purposely did not tie a theme to their work or require a specific meaning making target as I was interested in what they would choose to do if given free reign of subject. I am always searching for what is meaningful to my students. I want them to think and behave as artists do. Setting a meaning making target or theme will help do this.  Sometimes though, (like for this problem) I like to intentionally step back and just observe where they are at and notice their interests.



Students collaboratively developed storyboards and made props. They did not seem to struggle with developing ideas and many noticed how having a team to collaborate with really helped.



Groups wrote love stories, adventure themes, reenactments from films they have seen or books they have read and some were screen versions of characters the students had previously developed through their own creative writing. Of course, as expected there were the ever popular epic battle scenes, some groups tried to defy the laws of nature and some were just plain silly. My role in this creative problem finding/solving adventure became materials facilitator, collaboration coach and tech consult. 



While I see the value in inviting students to have full creative license in their story production, I think that next time I will close the problem just a little bit and offer a range of four or five themes for them to choose from. When editing the works together, the final product would be more cohesive if they could be grouped in this way. I'm leaning towards the themes of transformation, growth, community and interdependence.



Inventing

Students made their movies from a wide variety of materials. Each group chose among many things including  paper, modeling clay, toys, cardboard, tools,whiteboards with Expo markers and some groups used their own bodies.  



One of the challenges that many of the groups had in making their films involved finding ways to keep the camera still.  The three tripods our media center had to loan only worked for flip cameras. The kids became pretty inventive, taping their phones and iPads to upside down stool legs and using binder clips attached to books and other things to keep their shots consistent.



When I try this again with a new group, I will invite the students to spend more class time investigating the benefits and limitations of each of the material choices. We may even spend a few days making more "practice" videos with each of the material options. I also hope to find some grant money for some movie making materials, including a set of ten or twelve tripods.

Making "fireworks"

Sharing an Experience

The students finished their very short animations in time to be edited together (thanks Jim!) into one large production.  This feature was premiered prior to an annual after school art event called the "Trashion Show" that I will post about soon.

The students were completely engrossed watching their own movies on the big screen for the first time. You could have heard a pin drop.

Reflecting

The students reflected upon the success of their films and the process of collaborating with others. We talked about how essential collaboration is to the creative process. They wrote and/or recorded "words of advice" for future classes who will also experiment with making stop motion animation films.  Some of their "words of advice":



"It's good to work with your friends, it can be easy when they help come up with ideas, but sometimes hard too. You have to learn to deal with problems together."


"Being creative and making movies is fun, but it's also a lot of work. If you try to do your best and work hard, you can surprise yourself."



"Make sure you take lots and lots of frames per second, otherwise your movie will be choppy and too fast."



"Be sure to save your work a lot. And always have a back up plan if your first idea doesn't look as good as you thought."



"Decide who will be in charge of the camera and who will move the stuff around. Keep your phone still or else your movie will look like there's something wrong with it."



"Use your time well.  Don't think you can wait until the last minute because you can't."



Below are three of my favorite student made movies. I hope you enjoy them as much as my students and I do!