Stop Motion Videos

Stop motion videos are the digital ages' flipbooks.  You take a series of photos of an object or subject moving slightly from one frame to the next and then animate.  In doing so, the object appears to be moving. If you've ever seen the Lego movies, you've seen stop motion in action.  There are TONS of stop motion examples on YouTube. I used the below video to introduce my students to the project:

I had my students created a "pre-viz" for their stop motion video.  They had the option of using Google Docs, StoryboardThat, or hand-drawing.  From there, we used PhotoBooth to take the photographs and then imported those photos into iMovie.  I did allow students to use their cell phones to take the pictures if they wanted, as it's very awkward to take photos using the Macbook.  Keep in mind, iMovie only allows .1 frames per second, so it will require 100 photos to have a 10-second animation.  

Once the students had their photos taken, I showed this tutorial to show them how to use iMovie to animate:

Students animated, published to YouTube and shared their videos with the class.  


Discovery Education's blog gives the following ideas for using stop motion across the curriculum:
ENGLISH
  • Interpret a scene or passage from a movie, novel, poem or play
  • Recount a story that seeks to preserve cultures and traditions
  • Re-enact a short fable, legend or myth
MATH
  • Visually exemplify how math can be used to solve real-world problems
  • Visually exemplify mathematic principles such as the isosceles triangle, pi, or Pythagorean theorem
  • Demonstrate the transformation of objects
  • Illustrate a math strategy
SCIENCE
  • Visualize a part of the human anatomy and how it works
  • Visualize a molecular structure or growth of plants or animals
  • Visualize how levers, pistons or pulleys work
  • Simulate chemical reactions
  • Help them visualize molecular concepts, electrons, protons or micro- scopic work
SOCIAL STUDIES
  • Tell a story about lives, events, places, environments or eras
  • Visually depict world discoveries or significant historical events
  • Represent a certain time period in relation to a famous historical figure
  • Depict controversial topics such as world disasters or wars
  • Depict geographical concepts
HEALTH
  • Depict a healthy activity or lifestyle
  • Address a social or self-esteem issue
  • Present a health promotion topic
  • Address unhealthy behaviours—such as bullying, smoking, addiction, eating disorders, peer pressure
  • Provide a lens into the consequences of poor health choices
ARTS, MUSIC, THEATER
  • Provide a representation of an artwork from a particular era or place
  • Provide examples of different art forms
  • Portray an interpretation of a dance or art technique
  • Tell a theatrical story
  • Reproduce and reinterpret original animated artistic works

Finally, here are some student samples from my ETC:
Ben's colored pencils

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