Using Photography and Stop-Frame AnimationsSome ideas for stop-frame includeORoleplaying characters in history, drama, English, MFL etc.OModelling movement e.g. plate tectonics, digestion, ORoleplaying scenarios and job roles, e.g. health and social care, child development, lifeOTime-lapse e.g. mixing ingredients, technology projects, plant growth, artwork

Step 1: Make a Storyboard

O Decide upon the sequence of events, where do you plan to start and finish?

O Are you going to use narration or put written signs into the animation?

O Choose your model figures or plasticine and a background for your animation.

Step 2: PhotographyO Take a series of photographs, moving

the figures slightly for each frame. O Try not to move the figures too far in

one go. It is better to take lots of pictures to get a smoother movement.

O Try to keep the position, zoom and lighting the same. If a flash is used, use it for every picture.

Using Windows Movie Maker

O This is one method to put your photogaphs together as a film. There are probably lots of other ways in which the movie can be edited, especially if you have access to apple macs.

O I found that the students were quite intuitive at using the software. I mainly had to help them with uploading photos and saving in the right format.

Import any photos that you want to include in the animation

Highlight the files that you want to import and click ‘import’

Drag the pictures into the timeline in the order that you want them.

Drag the clip to shorten or lengthen them.

Increase or decrease the scale by using the zoom buttons

Continue dragging until you have the times that you require.

You can add narration by clicking on the microphone button.

Music and pictures can also be imported to enhance the movie.

Drag the music file into the timeline.

You can cut music tracks, or drag them to fit the movie. It is best to do this as the final step before saving.

Add titles, descriptive slides and credits using the link on the side bar.

When your film is complete, do not simply ‘save project’. If you move any of the photo files or music on your computer (or use a different computer) it will not be able to find the files. You can save as a project first, in case you want to return to make any changes.

To save the movie, choose save movie file

Then browse for the location you want to save it to. If lots of pupils are saving, I find it useful to have a pen drive as they have problems saving movies on the network sometimes.

O Comic life is another great idea for using photos, you can add speech bubbles etc.