Stop motion animation [workshop]

In class, we made a stop motion animation in groups of 4. Along side Natalia, Emily and Dorna, we made a stop motion animation to do with stationary racing around a room. The key aspect to making this was creativity - we needed to be imaginative and realistic at the same time to make a really good video.

The storyline was simple - a hole puncher, two remotes and a doorstop race around the room. They go along desks, up walls, down chairs and along the floor. Using just blue tack, getting some of the objects to stay in certain area's was pretty difficult, especially the heavy ones like the remotes and hole puncher. It worked out in the end though, we just needed to either apply more blue tack or rest them on a solid piece of scenery. 

Getting the room and time was the hardest thing about this project - as we had only one lesson to film, we needed to get to the nearest room where blue tack and props were found and start shooting immediately. Luckily, this room wasn't too far away at all; in fact it was directly underneath the room where we do lessons. This was a huge help because we didn't need to trek around the school to find somewhere to shoot so we could have more time editing.

In this stop motion animation, a number of principles were used - anticipation and staging were the most prominent. We needed a frame of anticipation before some frames in order to pull off the 'anticipation' effect - we did this by simply moving the object back for a single frame, as if getting ready for the upcoming movement. Doing this worked well because it made our animation look more realistic and therefore more effective. Staging was used in our piece to show off certain elements of each object racing; we made the hole puncher repeatedly last in each segment of the video, and also made him push the computer mouse instead on climbing over it, which all the other objects did. We also made him win the race at the end of the video by making the lead two characters, the two remotes, crash, meaning that he won. We incorporated this principle, staging, with the principle of 'appeal' - the 'likeliness' of each object. Though not particularly meant, it added a more personal side to the story, with the slowest character winning at the end.