Week 15 - Lots of hard work and patience

Our project is now in lots of bits and pieces and we really needed to pull it together so we reviewed the outdoor shots we did the week before and selected which bits we could use. Then we returned to our storyboard to review the order of some of the content of our project for entry in the" be creative" competition. This is when we realised that we could put everything we had created into one video. Because we are still short of animation frames we finished the session with some more stop-motion capture (after fixing some of our models).

Week 14 - The Healthy Alternative

5-A-Day and lot's of fresh air.

The sun was out, so we went to the outdoor classroom to record the pupil reactions to the Teacher Comfort answers. Without giving too much away, the pupils were a little more healthy in their advise for eating and exercise. Just as we finished our few short clips it started to rain. So we came in, dried the camera and spent 30 minutes touching up our storyboards. Next week, more animating. AD

Filming in Bowerham's own meadow.

Week 13 - Frame by Frame

This week we settled down immediately into some animation. Using Stop Motion Pro and web cams we captured as many frames as we could of our Teacher Comfort clay characters, taking care to keep them on a blue background and avoid moving the model or the camera between shots. After an hour, some of our sequences were as long as 45 seconds (Wow!) This part of animating needs real patience and care, we all did very well. Before we finished we reviewed the sequences we had created and tidied away. AD

Week 12 - The Auditions and Screen Tests

Back from Easter, so we gathered our clay models together, reviewed the footage we captured for audio and remade our models accordingly. Then with some blue paper (for keying out) and a webcam we did some mouth movement screentests with three of the characters in preparation for capturing a longer sequence next week. to prepare for next week we will work a little more on our models and review the footage to determine particular mouth and body movements peculiar to each interviewee.

Week 11: Review where we are.

After last weeks interviews we had the job of reviewing them and considering how they might effect our animations. As the group was depleted due to Numeracy Club and the music evening we decided not to move things on too far, rather we caught up with little jobs we needed to finish for our news reports and looked at our animation characters.

Week 10: Interviewing the Staff

Although there were only 5 of us this week, we assembled our kit and set about capturing short interviews with some of the school staff.
Using a DV camcorder, a microphone, a boom and a tripod with a dolly, we trundled around school and interviewed 4 members of the staff for our "Teacher Comforts" project.

The plan is to use these interviews to animate our clay models to.

We also shot the scene, without the Teacher in, so that we can use it as our animation background.

Week 9: Quick Claymation

After looking at the details of the NGFL Get Creative competition that we intend to enter, we viewed some past winners and then reviewed our website and blog (taking time to look as some of the club's work while we were at it). There was added interest because we shared the room with Steel Band who were very interested in what we were doing.

Next we launched in with some stopframe animation, our aim was to make three short animations during the rest of the session. While the members prepared new clay models I (AD) set up the webcams and the software so that capture could start as soon as possible.

We had great success with our instant animations, splitting into three groups ad making one model each, the stories evolved organically and perhaps a little chaotically - good fun!

The clips can be viewed here:

1. Rabbit's Troubles
2. Totally odd friends.
3. Everyone hugs the Hugfish

We also looked at my modelling efforts, although my model, Mildred (pictured above), had an accident which resulted in some damage to her head. Later, her hand fell off. Nevermind, she's only made of plasticine.

Week 8: Planning our sets

Last week we missed a week because of the trip to MOSI and we returned with a reminder that we had sets to build for our "Teacher Comforts" project. Mrs Harper led a discussion about the scenes we would create and explained how we might design our sets on paper, annotating the props and how we might make them.

Before we settled down to our planning I showed a short video (as we have become used to doing this) and this weeks clip was an animated science piece about the Sun which had been made by They Might Be Giants. It was very interesting as a science lesson as well as having some good animation ideas within it.
The clip can be viewed on YouTube>>

During the session we also caught up with the collection of images for our Blue Screen news broadcast experiment. Aliens clips coming soon.

Week 7 - Video Graphics and more modelling

This week we reviewed the footage from our blue screen news shoot and discussed how we might need titles on our footage to identify who we are, where we are and what broadcasting company we are presenting for.
The group then set about collecting a background image (from google) for our piece to camera before starting to create the information for our screen title.

After this we returned to our clay models to discuss with Mrs Harper how we might improve them and how we might set about creating a set for them to be placed in once we start capturing frames.

Next week, there is a school trip to Manchester to visit MOSI - so no MovieMakers Club (shame).

Week 6: News about visitors from afar and exploding DNA

This week, following some initial discussion and the reviewing of our web material, we set up to shoot a short, news based, piece to camera. Using a DV camcorder, tripod, dolly, boom and mic. all the members of the club delivered an introduction to a news item (fictitious) that we had scripted last week.

We took it in turns to shoot and hold the boom as each member delivered the introduction to their item against a blue screen.

We hope to superimpose these short video clips over various background images and possibly some alien space ships.



We all scripted our own items and then helped each other to present them.

It was funny.

Next week - no club,
as it is half-term. AD

Week 5: Alien Invasion

To start this session we had a discussion about how we might make a short news item based on the idea that Earth had been invaded by aliens. As a tutorial we watched a short instructional film on the BBC website that showed us how to make a short news item on video. The key things to remember were: What, When, Where, Who and Why ?????? The bit we were going to concentrate on was the opening "Piece To Camera". You can view the BBC item on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/school_report/student_reports/8472052.stm
Then we carried on modelling and made some practical changes to our head and shoulder models.

Later in the session we broke off to watch the Black Hole again (by popular request), after which we spent 5 minutes writing a script for our Piece to Camera. We then discussed how we would shoot the piece against a Blue or Green screen and superimpose or "key" the footage onto a background scene and animate our alien spacecraft onto the scene. Something to look forward to I think. We also deliberated on how we would collar a few Teachers to interview for "Teacher Comforts". AD

Week 4: The Black Hole

We just had to look at our animations online (twice). Then we discussed how we might get involved in this blog and I (AD) realised that I hadn't made it possible for people to post their comments onto it. That's now been rectified.

Then we watched a short film called the Black Hole (Phil and Olly / UK / 2008), pausing it just before final scene to discuss what might happen next. You can watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5_Msrdg3Hk.

After that we set about making our clay models and in pairs we broke of in pairs to investigate the new web-cam and software (StopMotionPro) which we would be animating with. We learned how it captured frames and automatically joined them into movies and we experimented with onion-skinning techniques which would make it easier to track the movements were making with our models. The results of our experiments are posted on the moviemakers website.

Before departing, we looked at each others models, tidied up and then watched "the Black Hole" again. Next week - more modelling with the expertise of Mrs Harper.

Week 3: MovieMaker

Following a short discussion about what we had done so far and some thinking ahead about modelling with clay we all set down to a quick tutorial on how we would import our animation stills into Windows MovieMaker and combine them with titles and music to make (very) short video clips with the work we had done in the last session. The music had been made in "Garageband" (by Mr D) to avoid any royalty issues.

Then we set to work and we were all able to produce a version of our animations. Three clips were selected and posted on the MovieMakers website.

We also took a break to review the web-site and some of the work we had produced so far. Next week we will start modelling and planning our Teacher Comfort interviews. AD

Week 2: Let's make Movies

We waded in with some animation capture. The IT suite was busy so we went next door by the photocopier and armed with three Digital Cameras and three tripods we set about our first animation shoot.

Using cork pin boards and some paperclips, match sticks and buttons we split into three groups and designed three scenes. Then we moved them a little at a time and took almost 50 pictures in each group. This was great fun and three different scenes came to life: a balloon, a shooting star and fireworks and a bicycle which was eaten by a crocodile. The session flew by and before we knew it we were having to tidy up, but first we viewed our animations by flicking through the stills on the cameras playback setting. AD

Week 1: Introduction

On our first week we talked about what animation actually was and watched some examples of the kind of animation we would like to aspire to; this included some Wallace & Gromit (Grand Day Out), and a Kettlechip commercial ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej4wukUID9Q ) which we enjoyed a lot.
We then discussed how easily we can start animating using available software and I demonstrated the simple Fish Tank animation on PowerPoint (which can be seen on the moviemakers web site (http://www.axico.com/moviemakers/). Finally, we looked at our armature, a small wire and metal figure which was poseable for animating. Very quickly we shot enough frames to animate our new friend and I published the rough results to the web page. I think we had fun and it was a very productive start, especially once we had watched "creature comforts" (http://www.youtube.com/user/aardman#p/c/4FF3F1283D9EAC0D/20/NulYV_4DqYo ) and formulated our plan to make our own animations entitled "Teacher Comforts"

As it was just before the Christmas break we all agreed to put our thinking caps on and meet again the second week after the holiday. AD

School Movie Maker Club

Welcome to the Movie Makers in Schools blog. The first club took place in December 2009 and by the second week we were animating with stills cameras and craft materials, so lot's of fun. Feel free to participate in our blog and don't forget to look out for some examples of the Movie Makers work in the coming weeks.

Students Start Posting

Welcome to the School Movie Makers blog. Please start posting as soon as you have signed in. This blog is for Students of the club to discuss what we have been working on and share ideas. We also welcome comments from parents once we have some work to display. Andrew Daykin