Discovering Stop Motion with Three Mobile

Discovering Stop Motion with Three

The boys and I got to experience many different family fun things over the summer holidays. I wanted them to experience opportunities that were different, to inspire them, to help them learn. Three mobile contacted me with a list of workshops that the boys could attend over the holidays. These are free for anyone to attend so do check them out in the next holiday.  I chose a Discovering Stop Motion lesson, held in the discovery rooms above the Three store in Islington.

I had no idea what Stop Motion was, apart from knowing it was something to do with video. The boys are all obsessed with YouTube and with creating their own content, so I thought a perfect opportunity for them to learn something new. And maybe me too!

Made a day of it

We made a day of it in London. We firstly met my friend of 20 years Gem and her kids and had a wander around Buckingham Palace. I adore learning about the history of London and a tour of the palace is great way to do this. To experience the grandeur and expanse of the state rooms of the palace is very cool. Packed full of the most incredible art, gold, sculptures, chandeliers. It really was very good. No photos, as you are not allowed, and my they were strict!

We had a picnic lunch and the children had a run around the parks near the palace. We then took the short journey on the tube and a bus (oh the excitement of going on a bus) from Green Park to Islington.

The Phone Room

We got to the Discovery centre at 3pm and chilled out in the most impressive phone room until the team were ready for us. This room had a wall of phone history, it was amazing, sliders, flip phones, blackberry’s. It brought back a lot of memories of the phones I sold over the years at EE from 2010 to 2015!

We were then escorted into the learning room with lots of high tables and stools and the tutorial started. There were just the two families there, so just the five children. The workshop was led by Alan who immediately engaged the children, asking them lots of questions about their experience of video and stop motion content.

Discovering Stop Motion

Stop Motion is video content where you take a series of pictures of a 3D scene, moving parts slightly to tell a story but taking a new picture with every movement. The pictures are then linked together in the Stop Motion app to create a short film.

We were shown an example of how easy it was to create with some characters and a few pictures and were shown how easy it was to make the movement, take the pictures and then to turn that into a video. We were shown how to add sounds and graphics.

Then the boys were off, they were to create their own stop motion video using some characters, scenery, play dough and other creative bits. They used their imagination to come up with a story, to take around 80 to 100 pictures to create a one-minute stop motion video.

Imagination takes over

The boys loved this bit and created a story with a snowball fight between two people and a dog that got involved and jumped at the people having a snowball fight, resulting in an ambulance arriving. They spent an hour setting up each scene and taking photos.

They adapted to it like second nature, know exactly what to do and how to create the story and add extras like caption screens and sound effects. And they produced a very funny and clever stop motion video.

The session was two hours and it whizzed by. They absolutely loved it and are keen to create more stop motion videos.

A huge thank you goes to Three for organising this session, it was pitched incredibly well and the boys really enjoyed it. More than they thought they would! We will definitely be back to try out another session in another school holiday.

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