I started keeping a diary in elementary school. Reading back through, I had the urge to share my very important elementary school thoughts and I’ve been struggling with the best way to do so. The other day, it hit me: Stop motion! How fun would that be?!

Throughout the week, I did a little research on how it’s done and found some really great resources (this video especially) for getting started successfully. This weekend, I decided to take the plunge and give it a try! Here’s what I came out with for my first test:

Awesome right? Not bad for a first try!

I happen to be the lucky sort of lady whose husband has a fancy camera, so getting him to drag that out and find the right cords was my first step. I also happen to be the lucky sort of lady whose parents had leant her a perfect-for-this-sort-of-thing camera stand for a different project last year. I got those hooked up and downloaded the Canon software necessary for hitting the ‘take a picture’ button on the computer so I wouldn’t need to touch and wiggle the camera. After loading all the pictures into iMovie, I strung them together and used my new microphone (which I purchased for an upcoming PODCAST!!) to throw in some voiceover.

Today, I dragged out some clamp lights that my husband had in the garage for movie lighting and tried to rig them up to the stand as well. Here’s what it wound up looking like:

After what feels like hours of struggling with the white balance, I got something I liked and started doing an experimental opening shot for my first diary video. Here’s what I came out with:

There’s still a lot I need to work on, but I had a lot of fun (except for the white balance figuring-out) and I’m happy that I got such a great start this weekend!