Making and Editing a Stop Motion: WW2 Battle of Caen

The Battle of Caen was a battle in the second world war and now I am recreating that with a lego stop motion, and here a step-by-step how to make and edit a WW2 stop motion.

Step 1: Plan It Out and Get Materials

In making a stop motion, you need a plan, some idea of how your story will go, for making a stop motion will take lots of work. Here, I organized a set and placed and spaced out pieces and lego figures where I need them. You don't need to write a book, just plan or think of an idea of how the stop motion will go. Also, you need to get the following materials:

--A Camera, iPad or iPhone to take pictures with

--A stand to hold your picture-taking device. This could be a tripod or a stand made out of legos to hold the camera.

--Lego figures to make your story with. Since my stop motion is based on a historical battle, with figures not made by the Lego company, I found other companies that make and sell different genres of legos.

--Some landscape or set made with legos or other materials for your story to take place in

--Clay or tack to hold lego figures in steep positions, such as on the edge of a cliff, climbing or falling.

Step 2: Begin to Find Angles

After planning out your story, set up figures and pieces and look for angles or positions in which to take pictures from.

Step 3: Move Figures and Take Pictures

After setting up, take pictures, moving each piece and figure a bit at a time with each frame. The more frames per second (FPS) that you use, and the smaller the movements, the more realistic your stop motion will turn out. I myself use 24 FPS.

Step 4: Keep Going.

What I mean by keep going is to continue taking pictures. Make improvisation into your story and movement and learn about new tricks along the way. If one type of movement is too hard, figure out how to do it some other way. If jumping is a hard movement to do, try angling your camera to hide part of the scene, and use lego pieces to elevate the figure out of the picture for example. This step is to suggest ideas and to show more media of me doing stop motion.

Step 5: Now It Be Time to Edit

There is generally two types of effects to do in stop motion--special effects and practical effects. Special effects are CGI, made with or on computers. Practical effects are like cotton or lego pieces shaped in different ways. These effects are used for muzzle flashes from guns, smoke, lasers, lights and lot more. For this video, I am using app called GunMovieFX to add muzzle flashes, shell casing and smoke effects for my stop motion, and can be useful for editing a stop motion like I am doing, a WW2 themed one. If you want to go the classic way, practical effects are what to use.

Step 6: Finished Product

After doing the stop motion and editing bring all the videos together with movie making apps like iMovie or Adobe premiere. A trailer for the Battle of Caen is now on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS8qyaJs1FM&t=1s