Stop Animation

Quick tips for making a stop animation and

taking photos…

Creating your stop motion video

1. Brainstorm your visuals

Discuss an “image” as a “scene.” Your image should be focused on, and should describe the story. The slightest modification in your image will create progression in your video

2. Create a storyboard

Because the medium will be single images, creating a storyboard will allow you to sort through a series of pictures and identify what photos to move where. If you are using music, identify what music goes with each scene. If you are doing a voiceover, begin with a script

Stop motion video continued…

3) Shoot to not EDIT

Do not edit your photos. The point of a stop motion video is to create and capture motion through photos.

4) Add audio to connect or give emotion to your story

It can be music, sound or narration. It can be much easier to add audio when nearing the completion of video assembly.

Subject and Orientation

You want to be taking your photos using landscape orientation, because your frames are eventually going to be made into a video. Your video will transition much smoother using this orientation

Make sure you do not move your subject too much between frames. The smaller the move, the smoother the final clip will play. The more frames you use, the more true the action will appear. Don’t worry about having too many frames, you can just adjust the rate of each frame so they play back quicker

Stop Motion Photography

1. Never bump the camera- even the slightest movement with be noticeable once your pictures are assembled into a video

2. Do not alter the focus of your camera

3. Be careful to not bump the subject or the set

4. Do not adjust the lighting

5. Try to shoot the entire scene at once- it will be very hard to duplicate frames or recreate frames

Stop Motion Photography

5. Always shoot more frames than needed- you can always delete frames, but recreating them will be very difficult

6. If possible, always shoot in high resolution- more pixels equals more options-(i.e...... you can zoom in on a photo and have the same picture quality)

7. Test your setup before you actually shoot- do a dry run through to test the mechanics of the set and the characters as you expect them to play out