Dan - Winter Camp

One of the extracurricular things public English teachers in Korea must partake in is an English Camp. These are usually done during the summer and winter and can last from 2 days to 2 weeks. They usually incorporate some sort of theme to teach, and the associated vocabulary. They're supposed to be more of a fun group of lessons. Movies, projects and games are the norn instead of lectures. Common themes include superhero camps, cooking camps, movie camps and even pop culture themes like Harry Potter or Shrek camps (Good excuses to watch the movies, I guess). This is all a part of your contract and does not require extra pay (unless you work overtime). Thankfully the camps usually last for a shorter period each time (a few hours) and you are given a wide berth of discretion in what material you can teach.

For 죽전's winter camp, I wanted the kids to create something they will remember for a while and that can be shown to many different people. I toyed around with the ideas of filming an actual movie with acting, but there was a simpler and more unique solution. Stop Motion video.

By Dan. Age 25.

(Click to see the video)

The group was 17 mixed 5th and 6th graders. Half boys, half girls. I had six hours to have the kids make something better than that. No problem. I set the bar low.

We started with a history of stop motion films. We watched a few short example clips of stop motion from hand-drawn frames...

 

To live action...

 

To working with props...

To clay animation, segueing into a segment about how most stop motion movies are made.

 


By this point the kids were mesmerized. I showed them an example from King Kong that gave even further insight into how old this technique is. (Teachers Tip: Cut the video at the 2 minute mark. These kids did NOT like the T-Rex having his jaw pulled off.)

Now it was time for them to create. I had several categories they could choose from, ranging from short story to sports to memories to travel to bucket lists. They had ten minutes to brainstorm in their groups of 2-3 as many ideas as they could foster. Once they had finished that, it was time for voting on their favorite. At the end they all had one idea to make a 45 second to 60 second video out of.

Storyboarding came next. I introduced the concept of storyboarding to the kids, making many references to it being "Like a comic book of the movie". This Monsters INC storyboard comparison video really helped solidify the concept into their heads. Then it was time to create.

The epic poop saga. The two girls in red above were the masterminds behind this.

Day one ended with the storyboards completed and art assets being worked on. I told them to bring in their phones for cameras for the next day, and planned to have 3 cell phones and cameras for backup. 

Day two started with a review of art assets. I showed them stop motion techniques: Perspective, cutting out major characters so they can easily be moved around, adapting backgrounds, etc. We went over the materials bought for the class: Buttons, googly eyes, balloons (Which were a bad idea, the kids never stopped playing with them), yarn, pipe cleaners, and of course sketchbooks and colored pencils. The students refreshed my memory as to where they were, what idea they had, and what they needed to work on. They had their roadmap and they were ready to create.

The rules were simple.

1: At least one English word must be in the video.

2: It must be around 45-60 seconds. This amounted to 60-80 pictures.

(Group: Super Hero)

(Group: Cookie)

(Group: Babo - Stupid in Korean)

(Group: Super Hero)

(Group: Americano)

(Group: Babo)

(Group Americano in front, Superhero in back)

(Group: SC Poop).

As they finished I had brought my laptop in to transfer pictures to. Before they shot I verified each phone to make sure it could connect to my laptop (some of them didn't, but we had backup phones). I used Sony Vegas to splice the videos together, but I'm sure a free program like Windows Movie Maker would work just as well for a simple project like this. The process of transferring, rotating the pictures, copying them into the movie maker and shrinking them down took 2-3 minutes per group. Rendering took about 15 minutes, so I had a few stop motion films they could watch on youtube while we waited.

For those who finished early I had them make a poster of their short film. If we had more time I would have allowed them to make another, shorter (15 second) stop motion but we ran over as is. The first group finished a half hour before closing and the last group came in right at the buzzer. We handed out snacks and watched our videos. Afterwards the students put their heads down and voted on the best movie. SC Poop's masterpiece won by a landslide, for which they got extra candy.

I'm really happy with how this turned out. Aside from me putting the video clips together, the work was all on their own. From art to filming, it was entirely them with us being minimal support. 

Here is the final product they all created. Enjoy!