Welcome to Week 15 of Selfie Saturday.
If you’re new here, read what this is all about.
If you missed last 14 weeks of challenges and tutorials, here is what we learned:
Week 2: Basic Full Body Shot
Week 3: Couple’s Selfies
Week 4: Arm’s Length Selfie
Week 5: Conceptual Selfies
Week 6: Me Myself and I: Multiplicity
Week 7: Portrait Selfie + Squinty Model Eyes
Week 8: Self-Love
Week 9: Focus
Week 10: My friend, the FAN
Week 11: Magic Tricks
Week 12: Jump Shots
Week 13: Family Portrait
Week 14: Collaborations
This week’s theme is
Stop Motion Photography
Let me ask you a duh question!
Have you ever gone somewhere only to return with over 600 pictures from one day?
Now did you ever feel like it seems like a waste to discard more than half of those photos you took simply because you can’t store 15 shots of the same thing, but they are all SOOOO GOOD?
Will you be curious if I told you I have a solution for you?
Today it won’t be about self-portraits necessarily, though you’re very welcome to turn this into a self-portrait challenge if you choose so. Today I’d like to tell you what I do with my “rejects”.
I borrowed this technique from a fabulous photographer I know who takes literally thousands of photos daily.
Some of you might have seen the stop motion video I made from the photos my friend and I took at Universal….
All you’ll need for this is a video editing software. If you don’t have one, download a free trial of muvee
here. It has everything you will need for this challenge and future photo and movie projects and I’ll explain how to use it in just a few minutes.
What I do when I take more photos that I can possibly keep, each one is as great as the other (or not), is make them into a movie. Not a typical slide show with every photo taking a few seconds on the screen but a picture movie, like this:
If you look at your photos before you toss the rejects, you will see that a lot of them are very similar with very subtle but noticeable differences. Those differences, if set at high speed and to music, will produce movement similar to the one seen in a moving film. It becomes a quick and easy way of sharing your special event/day with friends and family without boring them to death, while using up the photos you normally wouldn’t get to keep.
Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
Sometimes I find that stop motion is more entertaining than actual moving video. I have quite a few stop motion videos with over 3000 pictures in play, like this one {my BFF from back home who lives in Italy now flew over to visit us for 3 weeks, so I took three weeks worth of photos and put them into one LONG stop motion video}.
Since most of you have kids, it’s even better, because kids are perfect for this kind of project:
I, pesonally, use Sony Pro software for my videos, so if you already have a video editing software – GREAT! If you don’t, feel free to download muvee Reveal {free 15 day trial}, as I will be explaining how to make a stop motion video using Muvee.
The problem that you might encounter is that basic video editing softwares don’t let you space the photos that closely. They want you to have a nice and slow slide show showcasing your pictures. Well, that’s not going to happen when you have 3000 of them. I don’t know anyone including creators of said slide shows, who can sit through a 3 hours presentation. I believe Windows Movie Maker is one of those inflexible ones, not that anyone should EVER use Windows Movie maker for any reason other than uninstalling it.
If your video editing software lets you create very fast slide shows, all you need to do is drop all the pictures you’d like to use {sort them by name or date taken first so that they’d appear in correct order}, add music and adjust the speed of the slide show! Make sure the speed of your slides is between 2 and 4 images per second and no transitions ( the photos should just sit back to back and snap from one to another). Put it to music, adjust the speed of changing slides to the beat and render it.
This was my first stop motion video done after a Black and White part we hosted for some of my bloggy-turned-BFFs friends 
The best time to use photos to make a stop motion video is right after you’re done downloading them to your computer. If you have a batch editing software, like Lightroom when purchased with Photoshop CS5.5 software
, apply the same preset to all photos to spice up colors and make them brighter and then use every single photo for the movie. After the movie is done you’re free to delete rejects. But if you do this after you’ve already eliminated some rejects or edited certain photos you will have a mismatched video. Unfortunately, I never remember NOT to edit photos prior to making stop motion videos, so you might have noticed the difference in processing between some photos in most my videos. And that’s just not cool!
The hard part of this project is not adding photos, like some people might have assumed, but to get them to show at the right speed and with a fluid motion. Luckily, muvee makes it super easy and even adjusts the slides to the beat of your music. It’s really a great program to do slide shows with, even if they’re not stop-motion videos.
If you choose to download muvee 15 day trial , here’s how to build a stop motion video:
1. Use add button at the top of the screen to add photos and add button at the bottom of the screen to add music.
2. Once the media is added, select a style for your slide show. For a stop motion video, it’s best to pick Ultra Plain or Classic Vanilla and customize them from there.
3. If you chose Classic Vanilla ,click style settings and chose FAST pace and LESS response to music. Check the box that disables transition colors and hit OK
4. If you chose Ultra Plain, go to style settings as well, chose FAST pace and CUTS as your transitions., then hit OK
5. Preview the video and adjust it as needed. If the slides are moving too slow to show a movie-like motion, you can do a few things:
- shorten the music you have selected by dragging the level at the bottom of the track
- go to Personalize->Duration->Manual Length and set the time based on these calculations {number of photos divided by 2-4 images per second=duration of your clip in seconds}. The number of images per second is up to you, but for the best motion use 2-5 images per second.
- Use shorter music track
6. If slides are moving too fast, you can either have the music repeat or add another track and follow the steps above to adjust the speed.
If you have any questions, shoot me an email at contact {at} selfiemagic {dot} com
So the challenge for this week is a lot of fun, because you’re free to interpret it however you want. If you haven’t participated in Selfie challenges before, this one doesn’t require you to step in front of the camera, so join in on the fun.
For this challenge you can “shoot” a brand new stop motion video with a storyline in mind {that’s what I’ll be doing} or you can pull all your unedited photos from the last vacation before you delete the rejects and put it together in a nice a fun slide show to remember those times forever, or you can go out with your kids and go into continuous motion snapping away for fun, because the more photos spaced closely together we have, the more movie-like the stop motion video will appear.
The most important thing is HAVE FUN!
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