If you don't know what stop action is, is is when you take a picture, move something in the picture a little bit, and take another picture. You then do this a lot of times until you have enough pictures. Then you play the pictures really fast to create a movie. It is what was done with the Gumby claymation. Well, I decided to do this with a coin, moving a lamp around the coin to make a stop action of the coin's luster. Unfortunately, I cannot load the video online. Has anyone else done this?
First off, if you don't have a tripod, stop reading. I'm sure you do. It really depend on what you are making a stop action of... if you were doing a coin while moving a lamp around, put the coin in the same spot you would do if you were taking a normal picture and make sure you have enough room to move the lamp. You also need patience and a lot of time... without these you will be destined to fail. Some of my videos have up to 700 photos for about 1 minute and 30 seconds. The one I did but can't post has 163 pictures and lasts about 6 seconds. I you were making a set like Gumby, you would need time to make the components of the set. You would also need lots of lights so your set is well lit. As for taking the photos... try to make the change between the pictures as little as possible, and don't stop taking pictures unless you are changing the angle or something. You would need to take the photos at the same time of day so the sun doesn't change much between the scenes. If you are pressed for time, you could have many different scenes (like different angles of the camera, like many movies do when two people are talking) or short videos. Also, when moving the characters around, think about how they would move in real life, like someone swinging back on a baseball bat. When you are assembling the photos, put a appropriate amount of time between the photos so it's not going to fast or to slow.
