Filmmaking Students produce Stop Motion Videos

Within the Communication Arts department, the Advanced Filmmkaing class creates the conditions that inspire students to learn and use skills creativily. Most recently, students designed and produced stop motion videos! Below are a couple of the student stop motion videos, followed by their reflections. Enjoy!

LEGO influenced me greatly as I child because they let my creative mind flow. My creative mind now uses filmmaking as a way to crave its hunger. By combining my old ways of creativity with the new I thought I could create an image that would be pretty interesting. The hardest decision for me was to figure out a plot for the video. After an hour or so of brainstorming I came up with an idea that was a balance between easy and difficult. I broke the film down into scenes taking anywhere from 30-100 pictures in a scene. Those scenes lasted anywhere from 3-12 seconds long. I focused on a lot of close up shots to show emotion of my protagonist and antagonist. The editing process might seem painstaking, but I used an old system that makes work for a stop motion really easy. In stop motion, the number one lesson I learned was patience. In order for your stop motion to look really good you have to have patience and take every picture seriously.

The time I fell through the roof has stuck with me; it was a nerve wracking experience. The stop motion project challenged me to put my experience into a drawing. The project proved to be very tedious with every frame requiring a different approach. I knew just images would not tell the whole story, so I added a voiceover to make it easier to follow. My patience was tested; however, I am very happy with the end result. I enjoyed the process of making the film, as each step (brainstorming, filming, editing) was equal in importance. The stop motion project was a great time and I am excited to use my knowledge gained from it towards my future projects.