And now the magic begins.
- Place your characters on the set in their starting positions.
- Make sure you know what they're supposed to be doing in this scene.
- Take a picture.
- Make slight changes to your actors so they progress in whatever action they're doing. For example, if a person is waving, you'll want to raise their arm slightly to start that movement.
- Take a picture. Remember, the camera never moves. When you're advanced enough to use a panning camera in your stop motion movies, you won't be reading this any more!
- Continue moving your actors and taking pictures until all movements in the scene are complete. As a reminder, you'll want at least 10 pictures per second of film.
The most important thing to remember at this stage is to be very careful when moving your actors. If the set shifts or an actor gets knocked out of place, it is very difficult to go back to the way it was before. On a similar note, changes in lighting (for example, if the sun is setting outside) will be very noticeable in your film. Basically, changes that seem small in "real time" will be exaggerated in a stop motion movie. That's exactly why it works!
