How the Movies are Made

As you can see in the picture below, our "Studio" is not all that complicated, and extremely low-budget. A piece of cardboard is put up around the set to add brightness and prevent the room's wall from showing up in our movies. A painted background is hung over the cardboard, behind the movie set, and a standard desk lamp provides the lighting.

The movie set sits in front of a camera, which is focused on the part of the set being filmed. The set is taped down so that it does not get accidentally shifted when the animator moves a piece on the set.

Some scenes in movies require the camera to be filming from a slightly higher level. Usually we put the camera on top of a book or a few Lego pieces until it is at the desired height. 

Here is an up-close view of the movie set from "Legend of Zero".  In this case the background  is a photo from a calendar.

The movies are 'captured' with a program called AnimatorDV Simple+. When the animator moves one of the characters, the mouse-clicker clicks on the "Grab" button which adds a frame to the movie. The average stop-motion animation movie that we make plays at 25 to 30 frames per second. Multiply that times our average length movies which are around 2-3 minutes. That's a lot of frames!

The movies are edited with Windows Movie Maker, which is found on most PCs. Each clip is arranged into the timeline, and music, sounds, titles and credits are added.

Well, that's all we're going to tell you! The rest is a secret...ooooooo!

All videos on this website are property of the Willinghams.
They should not be copied, edited or sold without permission by the owners.
For questions please email minertrixie@gmail.com