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