Fun Things to Do On a Rainy Day- Making Stop Motion Videos

Right now much of the country is covered in snow, and here in SoCal we are actually getting a lot of rain, so what is something fun you can do on those cold and rainy (or snowy) days, something that everyone will like?  How about making a stop-motion video?

Until recently, We had never made a stop motion video, but after seeing the tutorials on the GoldFish Website, we knew we wanted to try.

Tips for Making a Stop Motion Video

Stop Motion Video is actually a group of pictures, taken one after the next that are then put together to seem like a moving picture.  There are a lot of Apps out there for making stop motion videos. (See more tips and Apps here)

1. Plan Your Scene
    Do you want something short and funny?  Something dramatic? Something sweet?  Unless you have a lot of time and really want to do a big production, you will want to pick a little short scene, think one thing happening.  Definitely seek your kids input as they have all kinds of creative ideas.


2. Get Your Supplies
    First, you will need something to record your video; you could technically take a bunch of pictures with your phones camera and put them together, but the Apps make it so much easier (and don't fill your camera roll with a ton of pictures)

Just about anything can work in your video, some useful supplies you may want:
   Construction Paper
   Glue/Scissors
   Molding Clay (they have packs of this at the Dollar Store)
   Stickers
   Yarn, pompoms, pipe cleaners

 For our videos we used Goldfish Crackers for the characters of our videos.

Right Now You Can Enter to Win $5000 if you make your own stop Motion Video using Pepperidge Farm Goldfish-- Find More Info Here

3. Set Up Your Scene

   **Before you begin constructing your scene, get out the App and see how big you need it to be.  You want your scene to fill the entire screen, so definitely size things out first.**

-Make the background and props you will need in your scene.  Make sure you have everything ready and all of the props set to the side.  We recommend taping the background in place, we taped it to the back of an old chalk board, as otherwise if it slides, it will throw things off.

--Prop Action: If you are wanting props to open or grow, you will need multiple version of that prop.
   Example: In our Picnic video, the fish carries in a "folded" picnic blanket then it unfolds as he lays it out.  My daughter actually made three different blankets, all of various sizes, so the blanket gets bigger as it unfolds.  We also made multiple umbrellas, a folded one, partially open and fully open, to make it seem like it was actually opening up.

TIP- 3-demensional scene looks really cool, but are definitely more tricky to set up and move the figures just right, if your basic scene and background is flat, it is a bit easier to do.  For your first video I recommend a flat scene.

A 3-D Stop Motion set up we did- though someone kept eating our Goldfish!

Here is our Picnic Video-the third video we actually made.

4. Camera Steady -Start Recording
     You definitely need to have your camera mounted or somehow stationary, movement of the camera will make the whole video off and shaky.  You can use a stand for your phone or tablet, or a third party one.  For our picnic, I mounted my phone using a phone tri-pod which I attached to the handle of my camera tri-pod, a bit crazy but it worked. Once your camera and props are in place, then start shooting.


5. Shooting Tips
   --Small Movements-- the more fluid you want your movie, then you need very small movements between pictures.  You want to set your things in place, take a picture then move your character just a tiny bit, then snap the next picture, etc.  If you want something to move faster, then move it a bigger space.

   -Keep things moving-- unless something is supposed to be stationary, like a house or tree- you will want to move each movable thing a little bit in almost every shot to help it look more realistic.  We did not do this as much with our first video, as we were still learning, but learned this trick in the end.

(Example- in the picnic, even when the clouds rolling in is the focus, we still moved the Goldfish just the slightest bit to make sure he looked like he wasn't a frozen statue all of the sudden).

-Take lots of pictures!  Our Christmas Tree video is 145 frames and lasts about 30 seconds, so yes we moved everything 145 times for 30 seconds worth of film.  It does take some time to do it well, but it is so fun!  My daughter would move the things, then I would click, say okay, and she would move them a little bit more, it was fun working together.

Have fun!

It really can be a lot of fun making these videos, in fact we are kind of hooked and have made several now.

If you want to take a try and making Stop-Action movies- definitely check out more tips and tricks at the Goldfish Website.

--While there--Don't miss out on your chance to enter to win $5000 when you make a video of you own.

Have you ever made a Stop-Motion Movie?