Make a stop motion film with your class
At a glance
- Who it is for
- Teachers of any subject, with no filmmaking experience
- Students
- Ages 6 to 14, from small groups to whole classes, even a school-wide project
- Time
- About three months of classroom work; a full school year is ideal
- Tools
- A phone or tablet, a free stop motion app, paper, clay and recycled materials
- Result
- A short film made by the class and a public screening for classmates and families
Prefer to read it all in one go, print it or show it to your colleagues? Download the whole method as a slide presentation: the eight steps, the teaching guide structure, a real example from tale to film, inclusion, artificial intelligence, evaluation and a twelve-week plan for your class. It is perfect for a staff meeting or to present the project to your school.
Before you start: prepare yourself
You will learn most things together with your students, but a little preparation will make you feel confident. We suggest four simple moves.
- Watch one masterclass. Start with The Art of Creating Stories: in about an hour you will see how a school film is planned, from the idea to the storyboard.
- Watch the video lessons. Eight short videos show each phase of the work in practice. Watch them all once, then come back to each one when you reach that step with your class.
- Try the app yourself. Install Stop Motion Studio, the free version is enough, and spend half an hour animating an object on your desk. Once you have made five seconds of animation yourself, you are ready to guide your students.
- Find someone to share the journey with. The teachers who succeeded best were never alone: a colleague, a tutor or a partner school to share doubts and materials with. Create a shared folder where you and your students will keep storyboards, photos and drafts.
What you need in class: one phone or tablet for each group, a stand or tripod to keep it still, a desk lamp, paper, card, scissors, glue, clay and recycled materials, a free editing app such as VN.
The eight steps, from the first lesson to the premiere
Each step tells you what it is for, what to do, how long it takes and what you will have at the end. The times are indicative, for a class working one or two sessions a week.
0. Warm up: discover stop motion
Goal: let students discover how stop motion works, and lose their fear of the camera.
What to do: show two or three short stop motion films and ask your students how they think they were made. Then divide the class into small groups, give each group a phone on a stand and a few objects, and ask them to make a five-second animation with no story: a pencil walking, a rubber that jumps, a ball that rolls. Watch the results together.
Time: one or two lessons.
What you get: your students understand that movement is made of small changes, and you start to see who likes building, who likes shooting and who likes telling stories.
1. Read a tale and understand it in depth
Goal: find the story your film will tell, and make students think about it.
What to do: read two or three classic European tales, not just one. For each tale, use a teaching guide with questions on three levels: what happens in the story, why it happens, and what we think about it. For example, in The Town Musicians of Bremen you can ask what the four animals have in common at the beginning, and whether any of them could have beaten the robbers alone. In The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats you can compare the wolf’s tricks with the fake news we find online today.
Time: two or three lessons.
What you get: students who know the stories well and have started to discuss them. You can use our three teaching guides, or write your own with the four-part structure explained below.
2. Connect the tale with European values
Goal: discover that an old tale can talk about the values we share today as Europeans.
What to do: ask which values the story is about. The values of the European Union, listed in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, are a good reference: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights. The Town Musicians of Bremen talks about solidarity and about how different talents become a common strength. One-Eye, Two-Eyes and Three-Eyes talks about people who are excluded because they are different. Then do a short creative activity: a poster for The Band of Europe with a slogan like “United in diversity”, a four-panel comic, a mock trial of the wolf.
Time: one or two lessons.
What you get: a list of values the class cares about, and the first ideas for characters and scenes.
3. Choose your tale and write the story together
Goal: turn the tale into a short story that belongs to your class.
What to do: let the class choose one tale and say clearly which values the film will carry; you can even vote. Then rewrite the story together. You do not need to follow the original: at IES Rodanas the ugly duckling became Bobby, a character who is not allowed to join a group, and the four musicians of Bremen became four instruments that sound bad until they learn to play together. Work in small groups, then put the best ideas together.
Keep it simple: a beginning, a problem, an ending. One page of script is about one minute of film, and two to five minutes is the right length for a school film. A longer film means many more weeks of shooting.
Time: one or two lessons.
What you get: a short script, written by the class, that everyone knows.
4. Draw the storyboard
Toggle Content
Goal: plan the film image by image before building anything.
What to do: a storyboard is a sequence of drawings, like a comic, that shows what the camera will see in each shot. It helps you check that the story works, decide how many scenes you need and estimate the time. A quick way to start is to create a first illustrated storyboard yourself with an artificial intelligence tool: it lets you see the whole film at a glance before you begin. Then give the students our printable template and ask them to redraw the panels by hand, adding their own ideas, the scene number and how long each shot lasts. The storyboard they build on must be theirs.
Time: one or two lessons.
What you get: a complete plan of the film, drawn by the students.
5. Build sets and characters
Goal: create everything that will appear on screen.
What to do: choose a technique that fits the age of your students and the time you have. Paper cut-outs are quick and perfect for younger children; clay is more expressive; everyday objects are funny and need no preparation; you can also mix them. Divide the class into teams and give everyone a job: drawing backgrounds, cutting, modelling characters, building the set. Simple and recycled materials work perfectly.
Time: two to four lessons.
What you get: the sets and characters ready for shooting.
6. Shoot and record the sound
Goal: bring the story to life, one photo at a time.
What to do: follow three golden rules. First, the camera must never move: fix the phone or tablet on a stand and tape the stand to the table. Second, the light must not change: close the curtains and use a lamp, because daylight changes and makes the film flicker. Third, use a simple app: Stop Motion Studio has everything you need. Set it to twelve photos per second and turn on the onion skin, a function that shows the previous photo in transparency so students can see how much they have moved the character.
Then shoot: move the character a little, take a photo, move it again. Small movements give smooth animation. Take turns, so every student animates at least one scene.
For the sound, record voices and sound effects separately, with the phone close to the person speaking. Everyday objects make great sound effects: paper for rain, a pencil tapping for footsteps. If recording is difficult, use subtitles and music, as in silent films.
Time: three or four lessons.
What you get: all the scenes and all the sounds of your film.
7. Edit, subtitle and screen
Goal: put everything together and show it to an audience.
What to do: use a free editor such as VN to put the scenes in order, add music, sounds, titles and subtitles, and export the film. Use music that is free to use, or music composed by the students. Then organise a screening: a premiere at school for other classes and families, a local festival, a page online. Let the students present their film and answer questions from the audience.
Time: one or two lessons for editing, plus the screening.
What you get: a finished film, and students who have seen their work on a big screen. For many of them it is the moment they remember most.
A twelve-week plan
Here is a simple way to organise the work, with one or two sessions a week. With a full school year you can make each phase longer and richer.
- Weeks 1 and 2
- Warm up: short stop motion exercises and examples
- Weeks 3 and 4
- Read the tales, discuss European values, creative activity
- Week 5
- Choose the tale and write the story together
- Week 6
- Storyboard: a visual draft for you, then redrawn by the students
- Weeks 7 and 8
- Build sets and characters
- Weeks 9 and 10
- Shoot the animation and record voices and sounds
- Week 11
- Edit, add music, titles and subtitles
- Week 12
- The premiere, at school or at a local festival
A role for everyone
A film needs many different skills, so every student can find a place. Organise the class into teams: story, art and sets, animation and camera, sound and music, editing. Give roles according to each student’s strengths, not only their marks, and let them change role from time to time.
In our classes, students still learning the school language took charge of photography and sets, a group of students composed the music of their film and gained confidence in themselves, and a student with a disability played a key role in building the materials. The quietest student in one class took charge of lights and camera, and then helped classmates with editing after school. Small groups, clear tasks and visible results help students who usually take part the least to find their place.
Using artificial intelligence responsibly
Artificial intelligence can help you, but it must never do the work in place of your students. In our classes it was used for three things: to create a first illustrated storyboard, so that the teacher could see the whole film before starting; to compose or complete a soundtrack; and to help revise the texts the students started from. In every case the students then redrew, rewrote or changed the material in their own way.
Three rules to keep in mind: the ideas and the story always come from the students; always check that you can use the music and images you take from any tool; talk openly with the class about what the tool did and what they did.
When something goes wrong
- The image flickers
- The light is changing. Close the curtains and use a lamp.
- The set jumps between photos
- The camera or the table moved. Fix the stand with tape and ask students not to lean on the table.
- The movement looks jerky
- The movements are too big. Move the character less between photos and use the onion skin.
- The film is getting too long
- Cut the story. Two to five minutes is enough; fewer scenes, done well, are better.
- The sound is hard to understand
- Record closer to the speaker, in a quiet room, or use subtitles.
- Some students lose interest
- Keep sessions short, rotate roles and show the progress made so far.
Evaluating the films
Watching and judging films is part of learning. You can evaluate a school film on three areas: how the story is told, what message it carries and how carefully it is made. Our evaluation guide explains how to do it, always taking into account the age of the students and the means they had: a film can be technically imperfect and still show a very successful educational process.
You can also turn your class into a film jury. Our young jury kit contains a simple voting form, a guide for you and a sheet that calculates the class results automatically. It is a great way to develop critical thinking and to teach students to justify an opinion while respecting others.
Tips from teachers who have done it
- Plan a full school year if you can: time was the most common difficulty.
- Start with short animation exercises before the real film: a few seconds of movement teach more than any explanation.
- Read several tales before choosing one: the choice itself is a moment of learning.
- Keep the camera still and the light constant: most technical problems come from these two things.
- Involve colleagues from other subjects: art, music, languages and technology all have a place in a film.
- Always end with a public screening: it gives meaning to the whole journey.
Now it's your turn
You now have a method, step by step. But this page is only the beginning: on this website you will find everything we created along the way, free and ready to use in your classroom. Watch the masterclasses and the video lessons, download the guides and the templates, and explore the films made by our students to see what your class can achieve.
Would you like to know more about the method, or do you need help to adapt it to your class, your subject or the age of your students? Write to us: we will be happy to answer your questions, share our experience and support you in your first film. And when your film is ready, send it to us: we would love to see it.
