Mario was just taking a stroll that day, casually wondering where Yoshi was since Yoshi had not greeted him that morning. On his lovely walk, he ran into his brother Luigi and Toad who were chatting. Mario greeted him as he walked by. Mario kept walking until he finally spotted a giant green blob. He’s never seen that before. Mario ran up to it and quickly noticed that Yoshi was trapped inside the green blob. Mario thought he saw movement on the other side of the blob, but wasn’t sure what it was. First things first, he’s got to save Yoshi! Mario leaps into the air and jumps on the green blob and it breaks open, releasing his friend. Newly freed, Yoshi thanks Mario happily. After they reunite, they later realize the blob was green Jello (apple flavor) and decide to eat it. The end.

I’m pleased with the end result. It was still difficult since I don’t have the necessary tool(s) to edit everything I would like within one software/app. However, I’m pleased with how I can edit sound in Audacity, and Movie Maker (barely) works well enough for me to finagle what I wanted to create. Working on this assignment makes me realize how difficult and time consuming stop motion videos/movies must be. You have to take many photos for long clips and make very subtle movements if you want fluidity in your end result. I kept mine fairly simple since I’m not quite skilled in this area. It took 45 photos and it’s not very fluid but I think it still looks good and gets the idea across.

The assignment was based off the Inanimate Motion video assignment (4 stars).

Step 1: Find figurines and whatever else you want to make the video with. I used Legos and paper I colored with a crayon.
Step 2: Arrange the figures and take many photos with each change/”motion” (ultimately creating a stop-motion video)
Step 3: Put photos on computer, and upload into Movie Maker. You have to do this one by one, tediously, by clicking “add clip” and selecting each photo.
Step 4: Make sure the photos are in order, and set the duration of each “clip” to 1 second (since it can’t be lower than that).
Step 5: Export video.
Step 6: Import video into your computer’s version of “video editor” and increase the speed of the video by 1.5x or more depending on how fast you want the video to be.
Step 6: Save video again, and import this updated version back into Movie Maker.
Step 7: Make a soundtrack on Audacity. I used sounds from Freesounds.org and recorded a few voices as well on Audacity. (See sources below)
Step 8: Edit your sounds/music, and make sure it is timed well with the video. I had to sync up the voices in particular. For the music, I had to reduce the peak amplitude and/or reduce the gain (volume adjustments). I also edited the voices slightly with “change pitch” and “change speed”.
Step 9: Export the audio clip.
Step 10: Add audio to Movie Maker. Click “edit soundtrack” and “insert music” then choose your file. Make sure it is synced up with the video.
Step 11: Once everything looks good, export video and post!
Step 12: Go back and add title and credits because you forgot. 🙂

Audio Sources:
https://freesound.org/people/envirOmaniac2/sounds/516010/
https://freesound.org/people/awhhhyeah/sounds/448256/
https://freesound.org/people/kwahmah_02/sounds/262893/
https://freesound.org/people/Clagnar/sounds/557647/