Author: Lindy Zhu
Recently, the Fine Arts students in Luwan Senior High School have shot an amazing short video by using a special animation technique, stop motion. The definition of a stop motion animation is a whole video being made up of a series of photographs, where objects are moved slightly when the students are filming frame by frame.
In the first two classes, students were struggling about what the theme of the video should be. A few ideas were rejected due to the shooting difficulties and having limited resources. Finally, students made the decision to use an enormous number of emojis to develop the plot. The video talked about a ridiculously funny story. When a plane was struck by lightning, two rich men sitting in first class were fighting for a beautiful parachute. Fortunately, they fell into the ocean safely. Unfortunately, they were eaten by a shark.
With the exception of a great number of emojis, few materials were used during the shoot. The background of the video was just one black and one white sheet of A3 paper. All the specific settings, like the inner part of the first class cabin and the close-up of the shark’s mouth were A4 pictures, which were downloaded by students from the Internet.
Surprisingly, the finished project completely exceeded the students’ expectations. One of the salient reasons was the excellent editing by editor, Michelle Chen from grade 12. “It was really hard work,” Michelle said. “ I needed to link more than five hundred photos together and count the length of every scene.” Furthermore, the film’s soundtrack was a hit. Although this was a short video of only three and a half minutes, Michelle added five songs, which fit the different moods perfectly. While answering how she chose the music, Michelle said with confidence, “I know what kind of music will fit in accurately and where to find them.” Michelle’s years of passion for music is the foundation of her talent.
In brief, the Fine Arts students are looking forward to showing their wonderfully creative stop motion video in the next school assembly.