In September 2012, five families - four Dads and one Mum, each with one or two children aged 6-9 attended a stop motion workshop in Wellington. Promoted as an opportunity introduce stop motion creativity to the home we had 5 hours for each family to produce their own movie.
The story was developed by the group. Everyone had the chance to pitch their idea for a story location. We agreed on one (a desert) and the first two kids were called up to record one sentence each which would be relevant to the location. The dialogue was recorded for each stage of the story in one take (mostly) in front of the whole group without knowing the next step in the story. Everyone got to put forward their ideas to develop the next stage of the story (Using the 7 step story outline from Stop Motion Handbook). Every person spoke one line of dialogue and it didn't matter that several kids voiced the same character. The Dads voiced the dialogue of the monster. Story development and recording the script took one hour.
Then working in families, each group made their props with Lego and Plasticine and painted backgrounds.
Every family animated the same soundtrack in their own way, using iStopMotion. The soundtrack is 90 seconds and pictures were recorded at 6 frames per second to ensure movies would be completed within 2.5 hours. One Dad called out "Look what I have made". It is hard to say whether overall the children or the parents got more out of the day.
Attack of the Scorpians
Desert Adventure
Desert Knights
Desert of Scorpians
Guardian of the Ruby
Families working together making stop motion
