Stop-Motion Contest!

For those uneducated int he ways of movie-making, stop-motion is a way to make movies without actually having a video camera. All claymation is stop-motion, for example. Since the majority of people who read my blog are college students for whatever reason, I address this challenge to you primarily: take some of that extra time you have lying around everywhere and use it to make a Stop-Motion movie, which can be accomplished with just a digital camera. I repeat, a video camera is not required.

Here are detailed instructions on how to make a stop-motion movie:

Step 1: Decide what your movie will be about. Don't make the mistake that I made in 9th grade, namely beginning filming without the slightest idea of a plot. You'll end up with something like 23.

Step 2: Find your digital camera. You have like 18 square feet of room in your dorm, it can't be that hard.

Step 3: Set your resolution to a lower setting than standard - I don't know how to do this for everyone's specific camera, but it shouldn't be too difficult. The reason for this is that video frames go by so fast that your eye doesn't have time to digest details of high-resolution anyway. You'll save space on your card and computer.

Step 4: Photograph every single frame of your movie. It's kind of a pain, but that's why stop-motion movies are usually so short. The less you move between shots, the smoother your movie will appear, but also the longer it will take. Regular video is just over 25 frames per second, so if you're doing like 50 or something, you can definitely tone it down.

Step 5 (optional): Edit your photos to increase lightness or fix whatever problems you had. Also, you can add special effects a lot more easily in stop-motion because there are fewer frames to rotoscope.

Step 6: Put all of your pictures into a video editing program in order. I used iMovie; sinners Windows users can use Windows Movie Maker. Each of your photos should be displayed for about 1/10th of a second. Less if you have a lot of frames, more if you don't have so many. Just play around with it until it looks like a movie rather than a slideshow, but you can still tell what's going on.

Step 7: Both iMovie and Windows Movie Maker can export this into an actual movie instead of a collection of pictures. Aim for a smaller file size when exporting (in iMovie, if you export to Quicktime using CD-ROM compression, your file size will be perfect. Can't help the sinners Windows users on that).

Step 8: Upload your video to YouTube. If you don't have a YouTube account, make one! To submit your entry, put a link to it in the comments box. I'll make another post after the deadline with all your videos in it.

The deadline is October 19th, so get crackin'!

Here's my entry, by the way. I made it when I was in 8th grade with some of my friends. Yesterday I stumbled accross it and added some sound effects. You guys can't really hope to compete with its awesomeness, so I'll let somebody else have 1st place. Mine can just be considered Ruler of All Things Stop Motion.