Rob here with 52 Things and we have a really
fun thing for you to try today. How to make stop motion And this, just so happens to be the first
thing in our 52 things series. This is something that's quick and easy and
something that you should be able to mix into your videos no matter what kind of videos
you make. If you do science videos, mix this technique
in. Or if you're doing construction videos, mix
it in. Or if you're a dad that likes to teach their
kids filmmaking, then do it as a weekend project. Literally stop motion is one of the more fun
things that I do with my six year old and my three year old. So it's taking pictures right now and I had
to move "things" this way that way and I had to write 52 over here. It was complicated. It was complicated? Yeah, it took me a long time. And now I'm just waiting for it to get the
best that it can. So I'm going to start this all out with a
broad overview of the genre, just so that you could see where you could start and where
might end up with it. And then we're going to kinda look at the
intricacies of stop motion and I have six tips for you to think about so that you can
put them into practice for your first stop motion video. And that way you can use it to spice up your
videos, your webpage, your instagram account or anywhere you have videos. So this is the first of 52 things and let
me just walk you through how this is going to work. Every time we're going to give you an idea
for how much time it's going to take. On this one it's probably going to take you
three hours to download the apps, to execute it, to shoot it and then work it all up. Now after that it should only take you about
20 minutes to do each subsequent one. There's just a little bit of time though that
I think it's going to take you to figure it out. But I'm hoping this might be the first thing
you can try over the weekend, and integrate it into your videos. Now, as far as cost goes, it's nominal. If you have a smartphone, it's going to cost
you from 0 dollars to 5 dollars, because the app is free, to 5 dollars, that's if you get
the add-on studio version of the app. So, super cheap. Very affordable. Something I think you can all use. Broad overview: What's the big picture with
stop motion? Well it's really simple. You're basically taking individual frames,
individual pictures, that when you put them together you can give this idea that motion
is involved when in reality you're creating that motion. The stop motion I grew up with as a kid was
gumby. Classic stuff. That falls into Claymation. It's a form of stop motion. It's one of for categories we're talking about
here. Now I love that stuff. Then you have this stuff, which is moving
objects. That would fall under the category of object
motion. Or you could take paper cutouts like this. That's a category called cutout motion. And finally, you could animate people as if
they were figures in a stopmotion set. That's called pixilation. And, I've actually dabbled with that a little
bit. It's super fun. This for example was three days of Haley standing
on my back moving one inch at a time in subfreezing weather in Chicago. It was ... it was insane, and I completely
destroyed that jacket and that outfit. The stuff that you see in theaters now, that
is gone one step further than gumby. In fact you might see something like this. This is Nightmare before Christmas and all
that stuff takes hundreds and hundreds of people. And there are great behind the scenes pieces
that are really fun to watch, but I found that watching those behind the scenes pieces
doesn't really make me want to create my own. In fact, it almost makes me want to do the
opposite. In fact, it makes me think it's way beyond
my reach as a creator. But, then you have people online like say,
this guy. His stuff is fantasic. I'm going to leave links to all of that below. It's amazing. He has these simple sets. He shoots them with a DSLR camera and he uses
a stop motion software called dragonframe. And then he can go one step further and he
can take each shot into photoshop and erase little pieces in the frame that he doesn't
want to be there. And that is definitely the way you'd want
to go if you're going the professional route and you're going to be doing this as your
job. But, just understand that the software there
for dragonframe is 300 dollars. Other than that if you have a DSLR already,
it's fairly nominal. So, if you have a big project, then maybe
that's the way you want to go. and I can refer you in the links below to going more that
profesional route. But, this video is going to kinda look at
the broad overview of what you need to think about in your first stop motion. And remember, simple doesn't always mean worse,
it just depends how you set things up anyways. This is a simple setup I have with my son. Uh, essentially what we have here - August
is moving little letters across a piece of paper and we have an ipad with an app installed
up there on the shelf and it's pointing down. We have kind of a convenient setup here to
do it. We have an app on the ipad call stopmotion
and this is what I recommend you do right now. It works a lot like dragonframe in that it
captures one picture at a time onto your timeline and then you can pause it at anytime. You can see where you are by scrolling backwards
or forwards and afterwards you can review those frames. So, at times, I got my hand in the shot. You can delete those really easily on the
app. The app is super self explanatory. So all you have to do is go download. You can figure it out. My son that is 6 figured it out. It takes pictures and then it like puts them
together and then they go in order to make a whole movie. Lets walk through some of the things you need
to think about as you're doing this stop motion, just general concepts. First, keep it steady. Now essentially you need a tripod or some
sort of stable surface for your camera. Here I had the ideal situation in that I could
lay the ipad on the shelf above the paper and we could occasionally stand up and see
what was going on. You could also use a DSLR on a tripod. I've done that plenty of times before. Or, recently I purchased this holder for the
ipad and that works really great. Two, don't touch your camera! It looks terrible when you touch your camera. You need to have a remote trigger, something
like this that you can trigger your camera with. For instance, this is my son not doing that. He's touching the camera every time and it
moves the frame around. It just doesn't look all that fantastic. Instead, you can set it to say, take a picture
every 10 seconds or so. That's something you can do on the app. It'll beep a few seconds before the shot and
give you a second to get out of it. Oh, gotta get out of the frame. Or you could download the app on say, another
phone - link the ipad and the phone together and trigger it that way. And we're actually triggering it with a remote
camera so right up there is one of my iphones and then over here it's being triggered by
this ipad. And I found that works really nicely because
it gives you a remote view of what you're taking a picture of. Three: make sure you're shooting manually. Just like you do a timelapse with your DSLR,
you want to make sure your aperture, your shutter, your ISO, your whitebalance, your
focus - all of those things are locked. You're not touching them. Now in the app you can do that. You just have to click the button that says,
"don't change as I"m shooting," because if you don't do that you risk having a flicker
effect. Four is lighting. Now, speaking of the flicker effect. The way you avoid that is having good, consistent
lighting. That usually means you're going to be shooting
inside where the light is not changing. You want to make sure there is not a window
nearby. Now the lighting doesn't have to be anything
complex. Light it just like you would any other scene. Now the one important thing to realize though
is that you're going to cast shadows as you move around. So if you're stepping back out of each frame
to take the picture you could be causing a flicker of yourself based on where you're
standing. For instance, my son was doing this unintentionally
here. And also, sometimes realize that the flicker
is a thing. Yeah, if you go on and you find after effects
templates for stop motion they add flicker to them, to sell it. You may or may not want that flicker but hopefully
you're doing it intentionally, instead of unintentionally. Five is framerate. Now, the only reason to think about that is
that you need to know how many frames to shoot to have certain sequence in your video. So, for instance, you're watching this at
30 frames per second. So, if you wanted a ten second stop motion
that would mean ... 300 frames? In reality, doing stop motion, you're not
going to be doing that many frames per second because you're going to have this jittery,
kinda stop motion in effect. So you're probably only going to shoot seven
or ten frames per second. And you can play with this in your editing
program but just realize that's about what we're looking at! Audio: Now this is super important because
you are creating still images that are silent and you ahve to sell this stop motion. So, if I take my script here (CRUNCH) I can add it to my stop motion like this. Isn't that cool! I just crumpled up the rest of my script. I have to figure out what I was going to say. So a big thank to our patrons who are supporting
this. Links below if you want to go there and say...
"hey, thanks for making this, here's a dollar or something!" We really appreciate it. Alright, that's it. So, go forth, make amazing work. If you do stop motion for one of your videos
or just as a project say with your kids or a school project - I don't know what you're
using it for - leave links to that down below. I watch all of them so I will check it out
for sure. And also remember this is the first of 52
things. If you follow along with us all year and practice
it once a week, you'll have a whole new toolset at the end of the year. We'll see you on number two, coming out next
week.
"He's deeply depressed."