Did you know that every toothbrush you have ever thrown away still exists, hidden away in a landfill somewhere? So the focus for the animation session was “Rubbish “ – all that stuff we throw away which ends up on a tip. Our tutor, Kate, had covered an entire work bench with un-recyclable trash,everything from vast swathes of plastic sheeting to lumps of polystyrene packaging to sponge scourer pads.
Two hours is barely long enough to create a stop animation movie, so Kate had distilled the task down to essentials. With no time for “story-boarding “, we went straight into model- making. Our aim was to create monsters from the rubbish then star them in a zombie movie. We split into smaller groups and dived in to the heaps of rubbish to emerge with the bits and pieces needed for our monsters.
I worked with G. and she had already set out her “story board” before the meeting. In her movie a heap of rubbish would start to move, slowly morphing into a face which would then give a wink. To film our movie we were to use the App “Stop Motion” on an iPad. And we hit our first snag. The tripods available were rigid and lacked an arm which was needed to place the iPad directly above our “monster” to film it from above. G. carefully transferred the “monster” onto a chair positioning the tripod as best she could, then we packed pieces of polystyrene around it to obscure the bright orange of the chair. When we were ready, Kate helped us to set up the App “Stop Motion” for filming. First she set the App to “manual”
Then Kate set the ISO to 100 and the shutter speed to one /one hundred and sixtieth.
G. planned to shoot the movie backwards, starting with the winking monster and slowly reverting to the pile of rubbish because it is easier to add than to take away.
We were so busy that there was little time to stop to look at what the other groups were filming. I did notice that K. had filmed masses of plastic sheeting falling out of a waste bin. Her animation was very effective. For another group, Kate volunteered to be a “victim” and had blood, (tomato ketchup) squirted on her before being filmed as she was ‘attacked’ by a rubbish monster. All the animations were saved for Kate to edit later. It is just amazing the creative ideas that the Elders thought up in such a short time. And it was such fun.

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