Over the last couple weeks I have been creating some stop motion videos with the app Zing Studio! The first video I created was with fellow classmates and was my first time ever creating a video of my own. I am super proud of the work we created with our first attempt but there sure is room for growth! Check it out:

scan this QR code to check out the stop motion video we made with the students

The second video I created was with a group of 3rd grade students at a local elementary school. For this video we encouraged the students to control the themes and ideas and helped put their ideas into video. I was so impressed with how much the kids knew about stop motion video. They taught us how to add sound effects with was a fun feature we played around with!

WHAT DID I LEARN?

  • after my first attempt I learned how to add SOUND EFFECTS into the stop motion video
  • during our second video the kids wanted to stop our progress to DELETE a photo so we needed to quickly learn how to go back in and continue a started video
  • Prior to our first video we talked about limiting ourselves to only a FEW PROPS which is something we should have reinforced within the video with our students
  • dropping the “boulder” in our in situ video was a really cool idea the kids had, it took a few attempts to figure out the best way to MOVE AN OBJECT UP AND DOWN rather than side to side but I honestly think it looks awesome

Stop motion videos are created by taking a photo and then moving the subject a tiny bit and continuing to take a photo for each little movement made! I may use this technique in a classroom to have students explore an animal in their natural environment. I would tell the student to focus on 1 animal and 2 props to teach us either how the animal gathers food or where the animal nests. Another project that I could do with my students is share a story with the kids and have them use the same theme to create a unique story using stop motion. This would have a focus on parts of a story and using technology as a learning tool.

Object motion: made using objects, toys, (like lego) both my stop motion videos fit in this type

Claymation: uses clay for characters and background

Cutout animation: uses paper cut outs for characters and background

Puppet Animation: a puppet is used for the main focus of the video

Pixilation: stop motion is created using human subjects

Silhouette: characters are shown as black shadows

The information on these types of stop motion can be found here, this source has some great video examples of each type of video so I highly recommend checking it out!

Photos Used (listed from left to right):

Found on Unsplash by Daniel K Cheung

Found on Pexels by Cup of Couple

Found on Pexels by Artem Podrez

Found on Pexels by Vlada Karpovich

Found on Unsplash by Khamkéo Vilaysing

Found on Unsplash by William Farlow