Stop motion for global issues
This blog post is by teacher, teacher trainer and long term friend to the Hands Up Project, Gerhard Erasmus.
Stop Motion animation project for Global Issues
Project based learning, when applied well, can be a great learning tool for both children and adults. It allows for exploration of language, the satisfaction of a completed project, and an opportunity to engage with a topic beyond what might normally be possible. The focus of this blog is to get students to engage with global issues by making a stop motion animation video. The focus of this specific project is to produce a music video, meaning it is somewhat different to other stop motion projects where you can make the video and add dialogue afterwards.
Choosing the topic
There are numerous issues globally that students can utilise. Initially when I started, I was reluctant to address some of these issues, because I was concerned that it might have a negative impact on the children. The more I did incorporate these issues, the more I was surprised by how well children responded. In fact, many of them would mention things they had seen on the news, or have learned at school, or have heard their parents talk about, and it is a pity that we sometimes avoid some of these issues. Also, keep in mind that there are local issues which can also be incorporated into your project. Here in Taiwan, for example, we are busy planning a project around the protection of the Taiwan pink dolphins whose numbers have declined to below 50 and are at serious risk of extinction.
A few examples of global issues that can be addressed are:
Child and youth safety online
Children’s rights
Human rights
Climate change
Decolonization
Democracy
Disarmament
Poverty
Food, food shortages, and hunger
Health
International law and Justice
Migration
Peace and security
Refugees
Water and the human needs and requirements
The youth and the future
Also, keep in mind that there is overlap between these issues and they can be addressed in combination with each other. You could start by eliciting from students which issues they want to discuss and learn more about, or you can lead by either selecting and issue, or selecting a song (as discussed below). Ensure that students understand the overall issues and what can be done to raise awareness of the issue or try to mitigate or resolve the issue. Keep in mind, and make sure that your students know, sometimes it is just awareness raising and learning about an issue rather than trying to change the world when you are 12 years old. But, don’t underestimate the resilience of young people and their ideas!
The music
If your students are so inclined, they can sing and record a song and you can even use an original song for this. For the purpose of this blog, I will suggest a few ways in which you can select a song. If you search online for songs that cover a certain issue, you are almost certain to find a few. Once you have selected a song, you can use the lyrics to guide the video, or you can just use it as music for the video. A few examples of songs I have used are:
War related – Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2) or Zombie (The Cranberries or Bad Wolves)
Environment – Where do the children play (Cat Stevens) or Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mithell or Counting Crows)
For both Zombie and Big Yellow taxi, the songs have been covered by different artists. Your students can listen to both and discuss which one they would like to use. As an actual task to allow students to engage with real communication in the classroom, these are the kinds of discussions that make this such a useful project. You can probably search for covers of specific songs within a different genre even. I have used Metallica bluegrass version, and we almost selected a much heavier version of Zombie from a person who plays heavy metal versions of different songs on his YouTube channel for my last project.
Ten other options of songs include:
Waiting on the world to change (John Mayer)
A change is gonna come (Sam Cooke)
Change (Christina Aquilera)
Man in the mirror and Heal the world (Michael Jackson)
Change (Carrie Underwood)
One tribe (Black Eyed Peas)
What about now (Daughtry)
Imagine (John Lennon)
One Love (Bob Marley)
The song itself doesn’t actually have to be about the issue, but it does offer an additional element to the project.
Working with the song
If the song is about a global issue or a specific issue you want to address, ensure that the learners understand what the song means. There are numerous ways of doing this.
For lower levels, clarify the meaning of key vocabulary and let them listen to the song with the lyrics. Pause the song if needed to explain the meaning. Using translation is a good way to engage with the topic as well.
For higher levels, clarify key words and let them listen to the song. Pause as needed to explain and elicit and then use the song as a poem clarifying intent and working with language. An example of clarifying intent can be seen in Father and Son by Cat Stevens. Initially learners (and most people) assume it is a conversation between a father and a son. But it is clearly not, based on the pronouns used in the song. The father uses ‘you’, but the son uses ‘he’ meaning he is either telling someone else or having a conversation with himself in the mirror. This level of analysis also helps learners notice important things about language and contributes to the learning process.
Learners can then discuss the song and plan how they would ‘Call to action’ the community or their friends or how to raise awareness of the issue. At this point, it might be good to introduce a few images if you have not done so already. The images, especially with higher level learners are excellent to generate discussion about the topic, the symbolism, and why the image has a specific impact on the person seeing it. With lower level students, prepare a few prompts like asking how the people might be feeling, why they are feeling like that, how we can help them, etc.
Introducing and planning the video
Show learners a stop-go animation video. As a start, the Lego movie or Shaun the Sheep are good examples of excellent stop-go animation, but you can also find videos online. Explain how the movies are made and ensure that you have one device for every 4 to 6 learners.
The first step is to plan the animation. Depending on which application you are using, you need 5 to 6 images per second. You would also need 1 to 2 seconds (10 to 12 of the same image) at the end of each musical sequence (a line or a verse) where there is no movement. Let students listen to the song and decide and time how long each sequence is. I strongly suggest dividing the song into 10 to 15 seconds sequences, so basically one line of each song. They can then calculate how many images the need to fill the time. Start each sequence with 5 black images and do the same at the end but don’t count them as part of the sequence. These black images will take up a second at the start and end of each sequence but can be deleted or shortened in the final cut. They are just to make sure the transitions are smooth.
In terms of the transitions, make sure to plan what will be in each part so you have a clear storyline throughout the video. You can also reuse clips, for example, the sequences for the chorus can be reused every time there is a chorus on the condition that each chorus is the same time in length.
Learners can plan what images they want, if they want movement, and exactly what will move where in the shot. These should all be tracked according to the length of each sequence (line or verse in the song). If they write, use 2 to 4 images per letter, as it makes the words easier to read and remember to have about 2 seconds worth of images to keep the message visible.
It will take about an hour in terms of planning, printing and recording about 100 to 120 images, so you will have about 20 to 30 seconds worth of video per class. Different groups can work on different sequences meaning you could finish the project in about 2 or 3 hours. I suggest recording a sequence as one set, and then starting the next recording as a new set or new movie in the application. This makes editing and fixing up mistakes much easier.
Use a camera stand if you have one as it reduces the jumping around of the images. Unless you are an expert it is impossible to have a perfect product, but you don’t want a video that is difficult to follow because it is all over the place.
Show students a few things they can do. Examples are:
Having a cut out of an image move (make sure this is very gradual). For example, a plane can fly across the screen, or a tree can drop its leaves on the ground.
The paper can become wrinkled until it is in a ball (again very gradual) and then unroll to show a different image.
The paper can be folded to form an object.
Students can write a message under an image or draw a picture (again gradually)
Allow for some creativity and remind the students that they can redo a sequence if they don’t like it or come up with a better idea later on.
Making the video
We used InShot to make the videos, but with Teens, there is a good likelihood they already have a preferred video maker or editor. Download the song and add it to the application without the music video. Then add the sequences from the stop-go animation application into InShot and edit the video to make it fit the sequence. This can be done by deleting some of the black screen images or if the video is too long, removing every 5th or 6th picture until the video fit the song. This doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect. Then keep adding the sequences until your global issues music video is complete. And most importantly, share it with the students and all of us!