How to make a stop-motion video short

How to make a stop-motion video short

A simple guide to creating stop-motion animation using digital photos and iPhoto and iMovie

By Jaclyn Campanaro
Special to Ourmedia

Stop-motion animation is one of the most fun and inventive techniques in home video. There are lots of ways to go about shooting, editing and finalizing a stop-motion short, but here I'll describe the simplest possible method. Don't be put off by the number of steps involved — it's simpler than it first appears. This tutorial deals with iPhoto and iMovie, but those who use other programs can follow the tips below to make a stop-motion animation.

Stop-motion in action

Stop-motion in QuickTime

Before we begin, here's an example of what you can do with stop-motion animation. You can see other examples at the bottom of this tutorial.

What you'll need

The first thing you need is an idea. Try to stick with something simple for your first one. Any action that can be split up into smaller parts works well.

For example, you may want to make an inanimate object appear as though it is alive — say, a sock inching its way across the floor. Keep in mind that you can expect to shoot around 10 photos for every one second of video.

Second, you'll need a digital camera. Because you won't be printing these photos, there's no need for high-resolution images. Set your camera to the lowest quality image setting, allowing you to capture more images. Depending on the potential length of your movie and how many images your camera will hold, you may need to "fill and dump" your camera — copying the image files to your computer and then erasing the camera contents — a few times.

Finally, to turn these images into a video, you'll need video editing software such as Apple's iMovie, which i will use for this example, or QuickTime Pro. There are also a number of free and shareware programs for Mac, Windows, and Linux, some of which are listed at the end of this tutorial. For in-depth information about these programs, visit their web sites.

Step 1: Shoot

Let's say you would like to make a sock appear to move itself across the floor. Start at the beginning: place the sock somewhere and take your first picture. Remember, you want to use camera (still frame) mode, not movie mode.

Move the sock slightly in the direction it will be traveling and take another picture. Move it again and take another picture. Continue this until you feel the action is complete. If you make a mistake, erase that picture and take another. This will save you from having to edit your film later.

You can do different things to add visual interest to your action. By using a camera tripod and moving only the object, it will appear as though the object is moving through the frame of the video. Keeping the object registered the same way in each frame by moving the camera along with it will make it appear as though you are traveling with the object. Combining these two methods would make for a more visually interesting video.

Step 2: Download your photos

Figure 1

Now that you've captured your images, you'll need to get them onto your computer. This process varies from camera to camera and will depend on which editing software you choose. Consult your camera's manual or software "Help" section if needed.

Let's assume that you will be using iMovie on a Macintosh computer. First, import your image files to iPhoto from the camera, giving them their own album; ours is named "moving sock" (see Figure 1). If you have followed my advice and shot everything in sequence in the camera, you won't need to alter the files or file order in any way. If not, this is where you may delete unwanted pictures.

Once your photos have been imported, close iPhoto and open iMovie.

Step 3: Find your photos in iMovie

Create a new iMovie project and name it whatever you'd like.

Now click on the "Media" button to the right above your timeline and select "Photos" at the top right of the window. (On older versions of iPhoto, you'll click the "Photos" button instead of the "Media" button.)

Navigate to your stop-motion album and select it. All of your photos should now appear in order.

Step 4: Animate your photos

For your animated short to play properly, you must tell iMovie how long you want each photo to appear before showing the next one. It's similar to creating a slideshow, except instead of giving each image a few seconds, you give it only a fraction of a second. The timing you choose will affect the overall tempo and length of your movie.

Figure 2

For our sock example, we used a duration of 3 frames-per-photo. (See Figure 2.) Since videos you create in iMovie usually play at 30 frames-per-second, a setting of 3 frames-per-photo means you'll see 10 photos every second. Now you can see why you have to shoot so many photos! Experiment with the clip duration to achieve your desired effect.

If you use the 3 frames-per-photo setting, you can easily estimate how many photos you'll need to create a movie of a given length. In our example we used around 100 photos, for 10 seconds of video. If we wanted to make an animation exactly 30 seconds long, we'd shoot 300 photos.

Time in iMovie appears in the "0:00" format. The number before the colon is the number of seconds and the number after the colon is the number of frames (so 3 frames-per-photo looks like this "0:03").

This next step is very important, so stay with me! In iMovie, select all of the photos in your stop-motion album. The quick way to do this is to click on the very first photo and then, holding down the shift key, scroll down and click on the last photo. Now click "Show Photo Settings" and type in "0:03" for your duration in the floating window that appears. Click the Apply button and your photos will start getting sucked into the timeline at the bottom of the window. (Older versions of iPhoto let you set the duration in your editing window without clicking "Show Photo Settings.")

Once iMovie's finished filling the timeline, hit play.

Congrats, you’ve just created your first stop-motion animated video short!

Final touches: Music and sharing

Figure 3

Almost done! To fine-tune your animation, you can slow it down by choosing to use more than 3 frames-per-photo.

To add music to your short, click on the timeline icon (see Figure 3), then simply drag and drop MP3 or AIFF files into the timeline or browse your iTunes library from within iMovie.

To share your stop-motion video, you'll want to convert it to QuickTime. The steps in this process depend on which version of iMovie you are using. In general, look for "Export" or "Share" options, and try one of the default options. Your iMovie help section will have more detail on exporting as a QuickTime movie or MPEG-4 video.

Now you have a fully animated short! Don't forget to save your project often as you go along, and check out sites like Vimeo and Ourmedia, communities where you can upload your finished videos.

Here's our finished sock movie.

Have fun, be creative and always experiment!

Great stop-motion examples

Between You and Me - an award-winning short shot entirely in stop-motion. Stunning.

Art of Motion - A campy, fun stop-motion by Russell Wyner of the University of Rochester.

Robot Chicken - as seen on Comedy Central. (Warning, may be offensive to some.)

Brickfilms.com - 100s of directors create stop-motion animations using LEGO bricks.

Stop-motion re-inactment of Space Invaders using people in a theater.

Stop-motion software: Mac, Windows and Linux

Don't have a Mac with iMovie? There are lots of customized apps available to create stop-motion on Mac, Windows and Linux. Here are a few:

iStopMotion for Mac.

JPGVideo for PC.

Stopmotion for Linux.

Jaclyn Campanaro lives in Portland, Oregon, where she attends the Pacific Northwest College of Art for Photography and Intermedia Studies. Here is her blog. This article originally appeared at Photojojo and was republished with the author's permission.

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