Stop Animation Workshop

We've had an adventure the past three days participating in a homeschool stop animation class. This project involved eleven families where the children divided into groups, created plots, acquired/made props, filmed, and edited. The end results were creative and fun movies (about 10, I think). One of the families is going to put them all together on a DVD.

We couldn't have done as much if Dallin wasn't such a mellow child. He sat, ate grass and dandelions, and did his army crawl around the yard while watching all the activity. He did spend some time in the backpack when I was filming.

The alphabet movie was a project for the toddlers and younger children. They each got letters to decorate and then chose an item starting with their letters to film. The moms helped with the filming and editing (I volunteered for that part--it was fun! I got a bit carried away with the sound effects!).

Ian and two of his friends made this Star Wars movie. They did all the filming themselves, and then the parents helped a little with the editing. We need more time to teach the children editing techniques.



Megan and 3 other girls made a delightful fairy movie, but we don't have a copy of it yet, as it was created on another computer. They painted a background, hand crafted their own fairies, and included poetry and Celtic music. It was a nice change from all the battle movies made by the boys (though the boys tend to disagree).




It was amazing how well everyone worked together. We had our fair share of glitches (i.e. Windows Movie Maker crashing repeatedly, troubles burning the movies to discs, etc.), but overall it was a very positive experience. We already have plans for another movie workshop, a week-long one this time to give us more time to work around the difficulties.