10.3 Lesson Idea: Stop-Motion "Telephone"

What I really love about stop-motion animation is the flexible nature of the media.  It lends itself well to individual work as well as larger group work!  One of my personal teaching goals is to bring an increased social atmosphere into the art studio.  I feel like projects have the tendency to become extremely independent and students plug into their iPods and get lost in their own worlds. High school is my target age group.  It is easy for students this age to keep to themselves and become isolated from each other which is why I would love to encourage more collaboration in the studio space.    

This may be wishful thinking and hard to achieve, but I would love to incorporate the entire class into one stop-motion animation project.  A short introduction and time to experiment with the Stop Motion App (easy to use, free, available on most devices) in class is a necessary precursor to my lesson idea in order to get the class comfortable with stop-motion animation (similar format to our in-class small group experimentation).  

Instead of breaking apart and creating individual stop-motion animations, I think it would be really fun to play a visual game of "Telephone" using the Stop Motion App as the vehicle for group collaboration (This could be done in class as another project happens simultaneously OR could be done as homework outside of class and combined).

One student (volunteer or randomly chosen) will begin by coming up with a simple story or scenario - instead of executing the entire story, the student will only create the first 10 frames (This number can be altered depending on class size).  This student will then pass on this unfinished story to another student of their choosing.  Without any prior knowledge of the original story, the second student will use what they see to continue on with their own interpretation of the story (for 10 more frames) before passing it onto the next person.  

Each student will watch what was done before them and continue the animation anyway they see fit.  Much like the game Telephone, students pass on their interpretations until the phrase (or in this case - the story) begins to take on a new life and new meaning completely different from where it started.  The end result being a full class creative collaboration that will be a surprise for everyone to see!

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There are definitely some kinks that would need to be worked out before trying this with an actual class of high school art students!  But it is just an idea that could be a really great experiment for us to try!