Stop Motion
Materials:
Tomato Seeds (found sprouting in a tomato while making a sandwich)
Purple Flowers
Acrylic paint
Plastic Bag
Paper Towels
Masking Tape
Watercolor paper
Desk Lamp
Clear Cutting Board
Rough Linen Fabric Scrap
iPhone
Final Cut Pro
Procreate Dreams
FreeSound (https://freesound.org/)
Tested but didn't use Stop Motion app, (hit a paywall, I recommend Flip A Clip for students)
I taught filmmaking for 4 summers at Light House Studio either as the lead teacher or a TA which included stop motion animation, so I enjoyed experimenting and testing out new things coming from this background
I spent an hour on the stop motion animating the sprouts, then had SO MUCH FUN I spent the next 2 days walking around the woods capturing footage the way I used to enjoy and experimenting with effects in Final Cut Pro
During quarantine I taught at Light House Studio over zoom and after work I would watch MasterClass classes by filmmakers like Ron Howard or by script writers like Aaron Sorkin and then I'd capture footage in nature for hours. I realized I missed filmmaking for fun since I've only done it for Light House or for clients the past few years. I kept editing after exporting the video for this class just for the joy of it
Stop Motion Inspiration:
At the beginning of the semester I was making a BLT and when I cut into a tomato some seeds were starting to sprout inside! So I decided to seal them in a zip lock bag with a wet paper towel and tape it to my window as a tiny greenhouse until all the cotyledons sprouted (the first 2 leaves that grow from each germinated seed)
I decided I wanted to animate my sprouts dancing and growing. Then I decided I wanted to make another animation of purple flowers growing as if that's what the sprouts were growing into
That's were the stop motion experiment could have ended. But once that was complete I wanted to create a narrative to help explain what forces could be making the sprouts move in such unnatural ways and grow so quickly while still keeping potential viewers engaged with a level of mystery and room for open interpretation. I definitely wanted some environmentalist themes. I also thought why not add a little 2001: A Space Odyssey nod at the end because I wanted to experiment with filming my pupils retracting
In Progress Images:
1&2: Grow sprouts (as described above)
3: Animate sprouts using stop motion
4: Walk around and explore to collect found footage
and images to edit together in Final Cut Pro
Set Up For Stop Motion Animation:
Using two containers of chicken stock I propped a clear cutting board up off of my desk and slid my desk lamp under it with the light shining upwards. I taped a piece of watercolor paper on top of the cutting board to move the sprouts and paint on top of and a piece of cloth under the cutting board to diffuse the light and create layers of texture I could animate in tandem with the sprout movement
I made sure to pull the blackout blinds in my room so there would be no light variation from outdoor light changes to create an accidental flickering effect in the animation
I also made sure to keep my phone as still as possible so the moving parts of the stop motion animation could line up well from image to image to create a smoother illusion of movement with all the still images. I did this but didn't worry about it too much because the goal was to create a crunchy and erratic plant growing sequence
Goals:
• To experiment with using sprouted seeds and something living in animation
• Experiment with dropping pigment and letting it swirl in water. I was hoping to capture the pigments smooth rounded shapes expanding in the water while testing what kind of choppy and unpredictable motion would result from capturing it in stop motion
• I wanted to see how well I could give the illusion of flowers growing out of the dirt by covering up flowers in dirt in stop motion and reversing the clip
• To go crazy with exploring visual and audio effects in Final Cut Pro
• Test different animation software
Findings:
• The sprouts will wilt within a day or two of being removed from the window and will wither further when submerged in water
• My plan was to take photos with my iPhone and import them into the Stop Motion app the way I've done before with Flip A Clip. I hit a paywall when I tried this so I imported the stills into Procreate Dreams and exported the videos to import into Final Cut Pro
Application In The Classroom:
• I learned it's important to make sure students take their photos for stop motion within the Stop Motion app
• I remember no paywall when importing photos into Flip A Clip in undergrad, so I looked it up and this action in Flip A Clip is still currently free but may be subject to change and may require ads. This is a good thing to check beforehand before teaching students stop motion
• When you import a set of images into Procreate Dreams you get a bunch of options to change the duration of each image which may be confusing for some students when teaching the basic concepts of each still lasting one second when first introducing stop motion
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