Writing scripts, creating scenery and developing a soundtrack kept a group of about a half-dozen teen busy as they created a stop motion video.
The teens took part in a workshop hosted by the Eisenhower Public Library in Harwood Heights.
Putting together all the elements needed for the workshop were Celeste Emanuel, children’s librarian. and Kathleen Weiss, reference librarian.
“They learned about stop-motion at a conference they attended,” explained Penny Blubaugh, community outreach coordination.
In stop motion animation, one moves a character little by little, shooting each move until the character seems to glide across the screen.
Workshop participant Lydia Zuehsow said her first exposure to the process was the Christmas classic, “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.”
Intrigued by the process, she decided to learn a little more about stop motion.
She didn’t realize how intensive the process is.
“You need patience,” she said. “You have to set up the scenes.
“It takes time, but it’s easy once you get the hang of it,” she added.
Not only did the teens create the scenery, but they also had to write a script and create a soundtrack.
“The only instructions we gave them about the story was that it had to have a beginning, a middle and an end,” Blubaugh explained. “And then write the music track.”
Billy Donaldson spent his time working on the soundtrack.
“It takes time to set up, but it’s pretty fun working on the music,” he said.
Sam Koopmann wanted to learn about stop motion and how to do scene construction.
“It’s kind of hard,” he said. “It takes around 1,000 shots to make a minute of the movie.”
Jack Tovar has had some experience with stop motion, so he knew the process could be painstaking slow.
“But now I know how much you can do,” he said. “You have to have patience, but it’s a fun thing to do.
“And now I know how they do “Robot Chicken,'” he said with a laugh about a stop motion show.
Tony Roth has created stop motion before, but attended the workshop to see what he could learn.
“And I live nearby, so I come to the library all the time.”
Roth walked away with a sense of how collaboration sparks the imagination.
“It’s fun to come together as a group and put our ideas together,” he said.
Kel Shanley also knew something about making videos, but not much about stop motion.
“I wanted to try it out to learn how to make good, production-quality video.” he said.
One of the best outcomes of the workshop was the camaraderie that developed among the participants.
“It was so much fun watching these kids who don’t know each other come together to collaborate on a project,” Weiss said. “Everyone likes storytelling.”
James Page, who also works at the library, stepped in to help and ended up learning a few things.
“I’m good with movie making apps on computers. but this stop motion app is pretty cool,” he said.
What also impressed him was how quickly the teens come together.
“They really had some elaborate special effects,” he said.
Donaldson said working with others was rewarding.
“We were able to communicate,” he said.
Tovar was quite supportive of the group effort.
“This should be an intro to a movie.” he said of their creation.
