Workshop+7

Claymation Creatures @ Elmgrove School
@Our Movies

Hi Everyone

I am look forward to meeting you all on Thursday. Here's a taste of the kind of activity this workshop is about.

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Our first step will be to create a "wild thing" from plasticine. We will be using digital cameras to take photos our wild things as we move them minutely. After a few hundred photos are have been taken, we will use iMovie to run all the photos together in quick succession. This creates the illusion of autonomous movement!

Have a think about what creature you might like to create and what kind of an adventure they could have. Remember the "KISS" (Keep It Simple Stupid) rule. A simple creature on a simple adventure at this stage of your learning will be far more successful than a full length feature movie like "Lord of the Rings".

Peter Jackson, the famous Kiwi movie director responsible for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong started his career when he was about your age using stop motion movies like those you will learn to make. Here is an award ceremony were a few examples of Peter's early work are shown.

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If you are interested you might like to check out some of my son's work with stop motion. His work uses Lego figurines and backdrops. Here is an example.

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See you on Thursday!

Mr Peacock Elmgrove School

WALT...
It's important to have a great story to tell if you wish to make a great movie. Today we don't have the time for stories because our WALT is...

We Are Learning To ... animate plasticine creatures by using digital stop motion photography and iMovie.

Once you have mastered this WALT you can create your own great storylines and animate them at home or back at school. If you don't have iMovie then you can use the same techniques with software like Windows Moviemaker.

Before We Begin
Check the following:
 * 1) Your camera batteries are charged.
 * 2) The photo quality on the camera is set to "low" or "640x480". You can use higher quality photos by you need a computer that can handle the pace of processing hundreds of high quality photos.
 * 3) Format the camera memory card - this will give you lots of space for all the photos you will be taking.
 * 4) Turn the flash off. The setting looks like this


 * 1) Turn the camera to macro mode - this is for taking close-up photographs. The button setting looks like this

Create your Creature
Let your imagination go wild here but remember....

Keep It Simple Stupid
 * Centipede like creatures have lots of legs - each leg needs to be changed just a fraction for each photo you take. A short movie can require hundreds of photos.
 * The animation (life) that your creature will have is added to them by the way they move and behave on the screen NOT by their look. Have a look at the simple creatures in this wonderful stopmotion sequences.

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Create your Plan
The best way to create your movie ideas is to "storyboard" them. We don't have time to do this today so we will hold our storyboards in our heads. Again we need to KISS! Remember Callum's Claymation Compilation? Weren't the tiny adventures that made up the compilations great?! Think of a short adventure that your creatures could participate in.

Shooting

 * 1) Place your creatures in their starting positions.
 * 2) Frame the shot and anchor your camera in place with a tripod (or blu-tac it to the table if you can't afford a tripod).
 * 3) Take the first shot - be sure to let the camera focus before depressing the shutter release button fully.
 * 4) Move the limbs, body of our creature or other objects in your shot a small amount.
 * 5) Take another photo.
 * 6) Repeat steps 4 and 5 until your story is complete.

Hints:
 * Don't bump the camera.
 * Watch that you don't cast a shadow on the set.
 * Press and hold the shutter release button before you click to give the camera time to focus.
 * Don't rush - small movements will create more effective animation - remember the tortoise and the hare!?

Importing
We will import our photos (from the camera into iPhoto) so that they are ready to be used in iMovie. Here are some instructions. It's a good idea to create an album of your photos for each movie in iPhoto.

Build your Movie Sequence
Stop motion movies are like flick cartoons found in the corner of some children's books. Each page corner has a similar but different picture and flicking these quickly creates the illusion that the picture is moving. We need to import our photos in the correct order and place them onto the iMovie timeline. Then we reduce the amount of time (usually 5 secs) that iMovie shows each picture. This way each picture appears for a very short time, just like flicking the corners of a book.

Import your photos into iMovie by finding the album you created and dragging the photos to the timeline (Steps 1 - 4 in the link). DON'T TURN ON THE KEN BURNS EFFECT!