Documentation:Stop Motion/Main page/Script

Finish planning. Every minute you spend planning your project is worth two or three minutes of designing, recording, and editing. Before you do anything else, download and fill out this worksheet. Try to be as detailed as possible: it'll make life easier later on.

Chunk content. One of the most important features in the planning worksheet is the 'Generate Concepts' section. This will help you break your content down into easily digestible sections, a technique also known as chunking content, which involves breaking large themes down into manageable chunks or concepts. If you intend to cover 4 concepts in a single video of 20 minutes, breaking the long video into four five-minute chunks makes it likelier that the material will be watched and effectively absorbed. Recent research indicates that the optimal length for student engagement is 6 minutes or less. (Guo, 2013).

Review principles. UBC's Design Principles for Multimedia provides an overview and basic framework for considering evidence based principles when designing multimedia for learning.

For more depth, have a look at Carnegie-Mellon's principles for learning, Merrill's first principles of instruction, Gagne's 9 events of instruction and Mayer's principles for multimedia development: they're all useful resources for helping you think about how to approach your presentation as a learning resource.

Select your objects. Now's the time to determine what you're going to be taking pictures of. Refer to the What Do I Need section for a few suggestions and a detailed discussion, but keep in mind what information you're going to be discussing. Do you need something 3 dimensional? Will you be reusing these objects later?

Storyboarding. After you've decided what you're going to be taking pictures of, and selected one or two chunks of content to start with, you can fill out this storyboarding worksheet. You can fill this out however you want to: for more traditional video projects, storyboards usually include sketches of each scene with notes attached, but you can feel free to use text, draft your script, draw important scenes, sketch diagrams you might use, or some combination of those and other techniques.

• Storyboard template (from Penn State Media Commons) along with storyboarding tips and examples.
• For more storyboard pointers, check out storyboarding for explainer videos by Common Craft.

Create a script. Writing a script will save you time in the long run. Include what you want to say and when you want to say it, with respect to what will be on the screen at the time. Once your script is complete, you'll get a sense of the flow of your project and can make decisions about editing more easily.

• Make sure to rehearse your script(s), to avoid unnecessary pauses or verbal stumbles when you're recording.
• Note what will be on-screen while you're speaking. If you have rough sketches of the scenes you'll be shooting, try including them in your script.
• Time your script to ensure it fits within the 3-6 minute timeframe you should be aiming for.
• Try to write as you naturally speak: not only will people learn better (Mayer's 10^th principle) but it'll be easier to read from: encountering the words it is when you'd usually say 'it's is distracting, and can throw you off.
• Review your animation for extraneous material, and remove it: stop motion is incredibly time-consuming, and for at least the first few videos you create, you'll be glad you kept things simple. Aditionally, the shorter your video is, the likelier it is that it'll be watched to completion, and staying focused on your topic is important. (Mayer's 1^st principle.)
• Try to spend some time at the beginning and end of the video previewing/recapping what you talked about: it'll help solidify the concepts you covered in your listener's minds.