Our First Stop Motion Movie

With my love of photography and videography, I have been wanting to attempt to create a stop motion movie with Luke and Abbey's assistance for a while.  I just knew it would require lots of patience, so I was waiting for the perfect time.  I figured it would be a great learning opportunity for both of them.  Recently, on a day I felt the patience was there, I gave Luke and Abbey each a task of coming up with a storyline.  Once they did so, we decided to use Abbey's storyline first (hers was a little less complicated) and create our first stop motion movie.  We decided to use Legos, since they are pretty easy to pose and are just so cool.  (We all love Legos at our house).

At first, I couldn't find a piece of my tripod.  This meant that I had to attempt to hold the camera as still as possible and tell Abbey and Luke when to move the different pieces.  When I say "as still as possible," it means I couldn't move at all--during any of the shots.  In stop motion, you take hundred of shots for just even a short movie.  Remember when I spoke of patience early in this post?  Well, patience went out the window and we had to quit the project.  We came back inside (we were shooting the photos outside), had a snack, and then I miraculously found that other piece of the tripod.  I say miraculously, because I had looked everywhere before we originally went outside to shoot. After I lost the patience with the first go around, I went to the Lord in prayer that he would help me keep my patience, and that I would be kind and loving in my tone towards the kids.  Then, as we were all happy and calm, I found the piece I was missing!  That was totally God's doing. He gave me a test--watched me fail as I attempted it on my own.  Then, drew me back to himself.  As I drew near, repented and asked for his help, he then allowed me to find the missing piece.  So, I set the tripod up, and we started all over on our project.  It went really well and was super easy.

After we took all the photos, it was time to put them into the form of a movie.  There are actually a lot of stop-motion movie software apps you can download for your Ipad.  Here is a link that discusses eight great stop-motion apps for your Ipad: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/03/8-great-ipad-apps-for-creating-stop.html.  Lego also has a free one called, "Lego Movie Maker."  These apps are great because they allow the kids the ability to create the entire movie from start to finish all by themselves.  They are very user friendly. However, most don't allow the ability of adding your own choice in sounds, including your own voice.  So, I knew that I wanted to use Adobe Premier Pro for ours this time.  We downloading some free sounds and also made our own using a voice recording app I downloaded on my smartphone.  And, without further adieu, here is our first stop motion movie.  It is a Lego stop motion movie titled, "Little Racer." It's not much, but it is our first attempt and we had fun doing it.

Now, we are excited to try to turn Luke's storyline into a stop motion movie.