How to do stop motion. What is required for stop-motion photography? Choosing the brightest and most comfortable place in the room

Video content on social networks is in demand today. But it’s difficult to do: you need to learn editing, look for people who look normal in the frame. This is a whole process for which specialists usually charge a lot of money. And it’s rarely possible to make a good video yourself.

But not everything is so sad. The stop-motion technique helps out all those who want to create video content for social networks without any hassles. These are animated videos that are assembled from photographs of a certain sequence. Music or speech can be added as desired. The description doesn't sound very cool, but that's what it usually looks like.

An illustrative example:

Or here:

More examples can be seen on Instagram using the hashtags #stopmotion #stopmotion #stopmotionvideo

Shooting process

Of course, it all starts with an idea. You come up with what exactly you want to see in the video and go from there. For quality stop motion you will need to shoot constantly, so make sure your phone battery is charged and there is adequate lighting. Once the photos are ready, they need to be edited. There will be several dozen, if not hundreds. Therefore, editing each one separately is too labor-intensive. Photographers recommend using Lightroom. In it you can process one photo, save the settings as a preset and then run a bunch of photos through it at once. In some mobile applications there is such an option too. In VSCO, for example. There is no need to adjust contrast or brightness every time.

The average for stop motion is 5 frames per second. Therefore, it is worth calculating how many seconds your video will last and how many frames you will ultimately need for it. The gluing process itself is very simple. When you have already processed all the photos, you just need to place them on the feed in chronological order. By the way, it can also be the opposite. Add music and that's it.

What programs are best to use?

If you have an iPhone

We recommend using iMovie. This paid program. But it costs 300 rubles and pays for itself in a short time. In iMovie, you just need to load all the photos that you took in advance for stop motion, in the desired sequence. Set the shortest possible time interval between frames. As you probably already know, to do this, you need to buy the selected song from the iTunes Store.

If you have an Android smartphone

In the Play Market, type “stop motion” and select a program from the list provided. Stop Motion Maker or Stop Motion Video. There is almost no difference between them. In addition, the function of gluing ready-made photos is paid. For free, you can only merge photos created using the application itself, and this is not very convenient. At the very least, you won’t be able to process them properly.

For stop motion you really need to shoot specifically, and not just choose some photos that were just taken. It is better to think through the sequence, timing and plot in advance. When you stitch together photos with a significant gap in the action, you end up with just a child-level slideshow. This is an unsuccessful example when a video was assembled simply from similar photos in the gallery:

The other day I was puzzled by a question: how to make stop motion from a finished video? I searched on the RuNet, but there was no useful information. The first thing that comes to mind is to manually select frames from the video, take photos from them and then edit them. But it is very long and tedious. I searched for a long time, and finally found a hint on some English-language site. I decided to describe this process in Russian, in case it might be useful to someone. Since I edit in Final Cut Pro X, I will explain it using its example. You will also need the Motion program from the same package. So, in order:

1) Create a project in Final Cut Pro X, transfer the necessary video to the timeline.

2) Open Motion. In the Project Browser window, select Final Cut Effect. On the right, select the settings that match the format of your video. In my case it is HD 1080, 25 fps, the duration can not be changed. Click Open.

3) Select the Library - Filters tab - Time folder in it - select the Strobe effect. Click on the Apply button to create the effect.

4) Go to Inspector - Filters and click on the small arrows next to each effect setting and select Publish so that Final cut can see them and control them.

5) Save the effect by pressing Cmd+S - create a folder in which the effect will be located and enter its name. You can check the box next to Save Preview Movie so that Final Cut displays an example of applying the effect on your video in a small preview window.

6) Open Final Cut and look for ours in the effects, under the name with which you saved it. Drag the effect onto the video.

7) Select the necessary settings in your effect, these are the ones that worked for me (in my example there are other additional settings that I added to Motion, but you are unlikely to need them).

8) The length of your video will not change. If you use Retime, the number of frames in the video will remain the same, their duration will simply increase. Therefore, I made a New Compound Clip (alt+G) from the video and already applied a speed change (cmd+R) and color correction to it.

9) At any time, you can open your video on a separate track to change the frame rate.

The basis of the cartoon is the frame. The number of frames may vary depending on the plot and the technique in which character movement can be achieved in a small number of frames.

Frames can be composed (montage) using editors that allow you to reproduce such a sequence (video editors, PowerPoint presentations...). In this case, frames can be created either by drawing (on paper, using graphic editors), using various materials(paper, plasticine, cereal, other materials). At the same time, to save frames in computer memory for further editing, you need equipment: camera, scanner, video camera or webcam, document camera (other devices).

Frames can be created using specialized editors (PowerPoint presentations, Flash, Giotto, other editors), which contain built-in animation, effects and use technologies for automatically drawing intermediate frames.

Stop Motion

Let's consider stop motion technology. This technology is over 100 years old and is based on a sequence of frames taken with a camera or taken from video.

Technology for creating this cartoon:

Preparation

- Materials: plasticine

- Equipment: camera, tripod, lamp, stage, computer.

- Scenario development- definition of “key frames”, that is, moments whose change is assessed as a change in the plot. Also at this stage, you can think about how one key frame will flow into another, how long it will take and what technique to use.

Key frames of the cartoon: introduction (hand and fox), arrival of the stork, departure of the stork, transition to the stork’s dwelling, arrival of the fox, departure of the fox, farewell.

- Preparing the stage and equipment. We can say that a competent approach to this stage is half the success. The main thing when photographing, for example, is the stillness of the scene and lighting! The stage can be horizontal, tilted or vertical. The light should be directed so that the characters cast natural soft shadows, or no shadows at all. This can be achieved using natural daylight, placing the stage in front of a window, or using a lamp with reflectors (the reflector can be a poster with a white back side). Next is the location and mounting of the camera. Any device will do for this. In addition, a trigger on the wire will be very useful. Also, when shooting, you need to watch your hands, various wires, and shadows from operators so that they do not fall into the frame. It is better to take a camera with an HDMI connector so that you can connect it to a computer, shoot and see the result of the shooting at the same time. Or you have a video capture program installed on your computer from a usb device.

- Test shooting. You should definitely take a test shot, even if it takes you a long time to view it on the computer. It is on the computer screen that you can see various flaws in the placement of the scene, unnecessary shadows, and composition.

In preparation for shooting, a vertical stage was used - a sculpting tablet. The background is completely sculpted from plasticine, the characters are also made from plasticine and are easily attached to it. The lamp was installed nearby and shone at a right angle. There was no extra light. The camera was installed on a chair nearby

Shooting

Shooting. Important stage working on a cartoon. Following the script, we place the background and characters, change the position of the characters. When shooting, you need to watch your hands, various wires, and shadows from operators so that they do not fall into the frame. The number of frames must correspond to the script, but during the shooting process, intermediate frames may change.

There were a lot of spoiled shots due to cloudiness, unnecessary shadows, and changes in lighting.

Installation

We transfer the received frames from the camera to the computer. We edit using any graphic editor. Load it into the selected editor for editing.

Basically, color correction was required. Windows Movie Maker was chosen for editing.

Voice acting

Equipment: computer, microphone or built-in microphone of a webcam, maybe a voice recorder on your phone. Scoring a cartoon is also a serious matter, because you need to get sound good quality. To process sound (trimming, removing noise, changing sound), you can use the Audacity music editor. Short ones are more convenient for installation sound recordings. For high-quality recording, it is better to initially select good equipment to avoid repeated dubbing. The room must be isolated. You can also avoid problems with sound quality using text-speaking programs.

There were no particular problems with dubbing, although we had to remove unnecessary noise.

Final editing of the cartoon.

Inserting voiceovers, background music and editing final version cartoon

The main problem may be the asynchrony of video and audio. Sometimes it may be that the duration of the scene playback is less than the dubbing, or vice versa. Still, priority is given to the frame sequence, because it is more difficult to fill in missing frames than to rewrite the dubbing, although the choice in a particular situation may be different.

In this cartoon there was just a situation where there was a lot of sound, some sound fragments had to be rewritten, but for some they managed to fit the frame sequence behind counting frame repetitions.

Let's consider the technology for creating the plasticine cartoon “Nutrition of Amoeba”.
Material: plasticine. Plasticine was chosen because this material is plastic, with its help you can change the shape of the character - the movement of the pseudolegs.
Equipment: camera supporting macro photography, tripod, scene - white tablet ( white cardboard or a tablet for modeling clay), a computer.
Scenario: On stage is an amoeba waiting for the bacteria to approach. The bacterium begins to move towards the amoeba. The amoeba is trying to make a spectacular movement with its pseudopods. The bacterium comes closer and then moves away. As a result, the bacterium falls into the arms of the amoeba, the bacterium is captured and dissolved.
Stage preparation: window sill, daylight. Creating a scene: sculpting an amoeba, bacteria, placing it on a tablet. Fixing the camera and scene on the windowsill with tape so that there is no movement (this may cause the cartoon to jerk).

Test shooting. Placement of stage and camera. We check the lighting, focus, quality of macro photography.

Shooting. According to the scenario, changes in objects are photographed.

Installation. Correction of color and size of photos. Using Office Picture Manager (open file using Office Picture Manager).


Editor window:

Color correction:

The result of color correction (the Adjust brightness function is selected).

Repeat actions for remaining frames.
You can resize photos in the same way. This can be done at this stage so that the photos can be conveniently inserted onto the slides.

Editing of finished frames in PowerPoint.
1. Create a new presentation.
2. Creating slides (slide layout - blank slide) and inserting photos, following the order according to the script.

3. Slide change animation, slide change time.

Animation of changing slides will help not only decorate the cartoon, but also hide possible unsuccessful moments of shooting, for example, jerking of the scene or characters. The timing of the slide changes can be changed according to the scenario, without clicking the mouse.
4. Using the “repeat slides” technique. If the scenario allows for periodic changes in the position of an object, then you can duplicate some slides.

5. Saving the presentation. Cartoon title. Captions: authors (required at the end of the cartoon). The presentation can be saved in different formats, but for publication it is advisable to use the ppt, pptx formats.
Publication
You can publish to any presentation repository, for example, http://www.slideboom.com. When publishing, you need to take into account that this service automatically adjusts the slide change time to 1 second, so online cartoons will play slower.

Exercise:

In this article we will talk about how to shoot stop motion animation. More collected here technical recommendations on creating stop motion animations that are aimed at avoiding jerking and flickering of the video, since stop motion animation is a sequence of photographs.

To create a basic stop motion video you will need a digital camera with manual settings, computer and tripod (or any holder that can be used to secure the camera).

But first, let’s note that there are specialized programs for creating stop motion animation, such as iStopMotoin, Dragon Frame/Dragon Stop Motion, StopMotion Pro. These programs allow you to immediately see the image on your computer through your camera and have a number of settings and functions that help you monitor the sequence of shots, compare shots, etc. You can also use regular programs that allow you to immediately capture an image from your camera to your computer. But we will talk about all these programs later. Now let’s talk about the case when you don’t have such programs.

Preparing for shooting:
1. Decide on the light
To create stop-motion animation, you should use a constant light source, you can use daylight, but you need to monitor the appearance and disappearance of clouds from the sky, and in the room there may be reflections of light from you and from the walls.
In short, just turn on enough light to photograph indoors and always stand in the same place when pressing the camera shutter button. And don't use the built-in flash, as it creates too harsh shadows.
2. Set up the camera, making all settings manual
M mode
ISO (50-400)
White balance manual
It is advisable to use manual focus
3. Mount the camera on a tripod or any flat surface so that the camera has support throughout the entire shoot.
4. Strengthen the tripod or whatever the camera is supported on so that it is positioned on the ground so that you do not move this miracle structure with your feet or hands.
5. Secure the subjects you will be shooting and secure the scene you will be shooting in so that nothing moves.
The stage is something that we will constantly touch, so it must be firmly fixed
6. Calculate the approximate timing of your animation
The video is shot at a frequency of 24 or 30 frames per second, if your first video is at a frequency of at least 6 frames per second, then you will already be able to see something interesting, but in the future try to reach at least 12 frames per second
Calculate how many seconds each movement should last, then multiply by your frequency, how many frames you need to take

Shooting:
1. Set focus on the animation object
It is better to use manual focus to avoid flickering light
And in the future, you can remember about beautiful game with refocus when main object gradually enters the focus area or, conversely, goes out of focus
2. Press the camera shutter using a remote control, if you have one, or use the two-second shutter mode (in 2 seconds the camera will have time to suppress the vibrations caused by your pressing the button)
3. Always keep in mind how many frames you need to make for a certain action in your animation

Installation:
1. Download photos to your computer and import them into any editing program (on Mac OS the default is iMovie, on Windows - Windows Movie Maker, there are also Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, Pinacle)
2. Place all photos on the “timeline”, set the frame rate or duration of each frame (the concept of “duration”)
Example: When shooting at 6 frames per second and the frame rate is 30 frames per second (in the editing program), the duration of the frame per second is 5 frames.
3. Add credits and “sugar to taste”
4. Export to video format
This is a list of the most elementary rules to create the simplest, but high-quality animation. Using these rules, your animation should be pleasing to the eye, smooth and even in light.
If you have questions, we will be happy to answer.

• Download the Stop Motion Studio app for iOS or Android to your device. Click the plus icon to create a new video. The camera will start automatically.
• Position your smartphone so that the scene is in view at all times. It is best to use a tripod for mobile phones.
• You can now take one or more shots by pressing the shutter button. Use a timer if necessary. To do this, click on the small clock icon and set the time, and then turn on the timer using the slider to the left of the clock.
• Move the shapes in the frame - the application will take a photo every five seconds. You don't have to configure it on your smartphone itself.
• Individual ones are displayed in the timeline below the camera window. If the video or scene ends, turn off the timer using the slider.
• When your video clip is ready, click on the plus sign in the bottom left corner under the camera icon. The video will appear on the application's home screen. It can be saved to your phone using the Share button by selecting the “Share to camera roll” option. Before saving the video, select the desired resolution.
• After this, you can transfer the video to your computer for further editing.

Stop Motion Studio: Additional Features

• The app offers many other options. For example, you can turn autofocus on and off, activate a grid display, or adjust white balance.
• The down arrow icon allows you to navigate to the Green Screen option if you plan to add a different background later. However, this option is blocked in the free version of the application.
• Using the microphone icon, you can immediately add audio to the video. To do this, go back to the first frame, tap "microphone" and start recording alternative audio.
• By clicking on the classic gear sign, you can set certain settings for the video. Here you can specify whether only the last 12 frames will be shown, or loop the video. In addition, you can play the video in half slow motion or set the playback speed yourself.