Camp Joan - Day 6 - Move a bit, stop, move a bit, stop...

The Camp Director made arrangements for an animation class with an Oscar-winning special effects artist. Let’s call him Oscar (since I don’t know his real name and that’s the highest honor he has received). Only problem was, we had to cross the border to get there. Yup – an hour drive up to Massachussets. We ended up in the middle of nowhere – better known as Lee. Of course, we were in some bumper-to-bumper traffic for about half an hour. We stopped at Cakewalkers, a popular bakery in town. One brownie and smoothie later, we headed into the building.
The building was a cross between a museum and a filming studio. There were posters, models, and that stuff, but there were also cameras, a little stage, and computers. Once we were allowed in, Oscar showed us some neat doohickeys (Yes, that is the technical term) like an illusion thing where you get a frog and you put it in this UFO-looking thing. Some mirror things were inside the not-flying saucer, but it created an illusion – kind of like a hologram. It is very hard to explain, so forgive me if the details are vague.
Anyway, Oscar lead us into the main room. He showed us some animated shorts and some stopmotion commercials. He finally lead us into the back room, and that’s when class began.





We were all told (there were 5 kids including us who were taking the class) to create a clay man. A large amount of clay later, I created a Cyclops and my sister created – well, a normal human being. Then, we went back into the studio/exhibit place and began filming our stopmotion. There was a camera in front of a mini stage – “stage” meaning two pieces of wood, with one sticking up that had a picture of the countryside on it that served as the background. Since I happened to be the oldest of the group (and maybe it was because I was standing closest to him) I went first. Stopmotion is easier then you think, yet very monotonous. For those of you who don’t know – I’m looking at you, Dad – stopmotion is when you take a picture, move the figure a bit, take a picture, move the figure some more, and repeat that for five minutes.
My Cyclops was told to clap, sway from side to side, get back up and bow. He preformed it perfectly.
Molly’s, however, was told to juggle my poor cyclop’s decapitated head! Even when we’re in filmmaking, she has to bust my chops.
Both of us edited one video – meaning click whenever someone gave “the signal”. “The signal” was the word “Yes”. Since our stopmotions became more and more complex, the word “yes’ was said at least 150 times, mainly because both the editor and the person who had to move the claymen both had to say it.
Oscar promised that he would post our videos on Youtube, but they aren’t uploaded quite yet. I’ll post them tomorrow.

Quote of the day:
“Yes” – everyone, at least 35 times each.