I’ve made tons of stop motion videos over the years, and I really have quite a great time doing it. It’s super fun and the results can be downright astounding.
The idea behind it is quite simple, really.
In short, you want to take several still photos and string them together in one long video. It’s like they used to do when making animation – particularly claymation – when every scene is assembled, captured in a photograph, and then played in order.
Or perhaps you remember flipbooks, where you’d draw each scene on index cards and flip through them quickly so that it has the appearance of motion.
The fact of the matter is, it’s not all that different from how real video actually works. Even digital videos function in this way, it’s just that the rate at which the frames are changing is so high that your eye can’t even detect it.
For example, your eyes can detect somewhere around 60 frames per second if I remember correctly. Anything played back at a rate that exceeds that will appear to have a fluid motion as you are watching it. Making a stop motion video is kind of like the opposite – you want to slow down the rate of frame change to somewhere relatively slow, maybe 3-10 frames per second.
Tools you’re going to need then are as follows:
- Camera (your smartphone will work just fine)
- video editing software
- optional background music
- access to the internet
Once you’ve put it all together, make sure to upload it to a video sharing platform like YouTube so that your friends can see the super awesome video that you’ve made.
Well, there you have it. This is a pretty high-level guide, but it should help you get started off in the right direction. It’s just one of the many guides I’ve put together here at Adventure Sauce. Good luck and happy filming!