The Baby Bobble Head Bad Guy Consortium: The Stolen Missile

I don't think any explanation I could give of his video would quite do it justice so here it is.

Behind the Scenes: The Making of The Baby Bobble Head Bad Guy Consortium: The Stolen Missile

After Arowyn got to make her puppy movie the other day Teagan started begging to get to do one himself. It had taken so long to get Arowyn's done though that I told him he'd have to wait until tomorrow to do it. So first thing this morning he had gathered together his babies and announced that he was ready so I let him have at it. His took even longer because he had quite the artistic vision that he wanted to accomplish and he kept asking me to write word bubbles for his video which also took some time. Unfortunately the writing on the word bubbles was not thick enough to be seen in the video so I had to digital redo them in post production so they are readable. His video was pretty demanding so at times he needed both Arowyn's and my help to move things around while he directed and took the pictures.

Teagan shooting a frame

Puppies at Play

We open on a dog with her two puppies out in a field on a sunny day.  After the mommy dog says goodbye to her babies the two puppies discuss with each other what they want to do today. Then some flowers grow out of the ground and the puppies blow all their petals away. Then the flowers stems shrink back into the ground and as the sun starts to set their mommy returns.  Then the little puppy runs over to her and gives her a puppy hug.

Behind the Scenes: The Making of Puppies at Play

Arowyn wanted to have another go at making another stop motion video today.  She wanted to use her puppies that she had made with the magnatiles in her video. This required a different camera set up though as they are not self supporting structures. So she used the photos of her puppies I had taken for her the other night and rebuilt them and modified them while I got the camera set up for her. This kind of set up for stop motion does lend to some more creative things you can do without having to worry about the effects of gravity on your subjects. Which Arowyn got to explore and had some fun with in her new video.

Arowyn setting up the older brother puppy

Arowyn deciding what to add next

Arowyn laying out the mother dog

Arowyn eyeballing me for 

taking pictures of her while she works

Squirrelly Visits Wolfie

Here's the synopsis in case you have a hard time following the plot here. We open on Arowyn taking a nap. Then Squirrelly and the beagle come in and the beagle wakes Arowyn up with a "Woof". After this Arowyn asks Squirrelly "What do you want to do today?" to this Squirrelly answers "We're going to Wolfie's house today." Arowyn says "Goodbye Squirrely have a good time." And Squirrelly says "Goodbye" and leaves. Next we see Squirrelly and the beagle in front of Wolfies house where it is night time which you can tell by the moon and the stars in the sky and I was told that this is because it is always nighttime at Wolfie's house.   Next we see Squirrelly and the beagle go into Wolfie's house where we see them with Wolfie, baby stormtrooper and baby Chewbacca. Baby Chewy greets them with a "hi" and baby Stormtrooper says "Hi Squirrelly" Then Wolfie asks them if they want to see his fish tank. There's no explanation for this in the video but Wolfie has a under the sea fish tank which can easily house large sea creatures.  Next we see all of them swimming on their back in the fish tank where they meet a Killer Whale. After this we see squirrelly back at home with Arowyn hugging her saying I love you Squirrelly.

Behind The Scenes: The Making of Squirrelly Visits Wolfie

After their parting of ways during the making of Teagan's video yesterday Arowyn decided the only way to wield the creative control that she wanted to was to direct her own stop motion movie. So this afternoon I got her set up and helped her to get started with the opening scene where she is in it, but after that she took over and did the rest.  In fact after a little bit she even managed to rope in her brother to shot the photos while she drew the backdrop and moved the characters. Although when they got to the part about going into the under the sea fish tank Teagan cried plagiarism. He claims that he had told her that the next movie that he was going to make was going to be an under the sea movie and that he had told her about his idea and that she had stole it. Fortunately even though he was mildly perturbed he kept working as her cameraman for her until she was finished. Making these stop motion movies have been a great learning experience for both of them in more ways than one.

 Arowyn erasing Wolfie's house

Arowyn drawing her killer whale 

for the underwater scene

The Baby Bobble Heads Go To School

Here's how the story goes for anyone who has a hard time following Teagan's video. We open on Teagan and his babies sleeping. Then Teagan wakes up and the thought bubble you see appear says "Time to wake up" (Unfortunately due to me not calibrating the color on my camera properly part of the white board is blown out and unreadable, at the time I didn't realize that this was going to become the whole days project for the kids so I didn't really care at the time but the professional photographer in me is now kicking myself because I should have). When they are all up Teagan asks his babies what they want to do today. Their answer is Go to school! Then the baby bobble heads leave to go to the bus stop and Teagan says "Goodbye" and Chewbacca runs back in to say "Goodbye" and then leaves. Next you see them at the bus stop and they all get on the bus. Then they get off the bus and then they are in front of the school with teacher Wolfie who then walks them down the hallway to the classroom.  Then teacher Wolfie falls ill and is replaced by teacher Squirrelly. They then leave teacher Squirrelly's class and go to another class where teacher Wolfie is teaching (in Teagan's original storyline it was supposed to be teacher Squirrely teaching this class but this is when the cinematographer went on strike and she took her Squirrel with her). After this class is over you see the babies get back off the bus at home where Teagan is waiting for them. And then the babies say "Daddy We're home!" and Teagan says "Babies!" and he hugs them and says "I love you!"

Behind The Scenes: The Making of The Baby Bobble Heads Go To School

Today on Yahoo! news I saw a cool stop motion video called The Joy of Books and I showed it to Arowyn & Teagan. Teagan wanted to know how the books did that and I explained that they didn't use a video camera to do that but that it was a string of photographs put together to make a video. He thought it was very cool so I asked him if he wanted to see how it was done. He said "yes" so I jumped right in. We laid one of our blankets on the ground, set up our white board as a backdrop, grabbed some books to act as a tripod for my camera and plugged the remote switch into my camera and we started making his movie. I've never made a stop motion video before but we just figured it out as we went along and after showing him how it worked I let him and Arowyn lose with it and they ran with it. So for the first part of the video with Teagan in it is when I'm explaining to them how it works so I shot that part and the very ending where Teagan was in it again. But after I showed them the ropes the kids took over with Teagan drawing and moving the babies and Arowyn taking the photos. Although after his cinematographer went on strike due to him being "a big meanie" he had to take over shooting for his video as well. This turned out to not only be lesson in photography and making movies but Teagan also learned a valuable lesson in crew resource management.

 Teagan arranging his babies

Arowyn shooting the photo

Cooking With Mema: Blackberry Cobbler

Arowyn's cooking video starring Mema.

Arowyn the Cameraman

We are down in Alton Missouri spending some quality time with my grandparents while Chamberlin is in West Plains for his yearly recurrency training with Air-Evac. Arowyn has been Grandma's little shadow ever since we showed up last night especially when she's in the kitchen so when Grandma started making a blackberry cobbler for tonight's dinner Arowyn just couldn't help herself any longer and she whipped out my iPhone's video camera on her and told her she was going to star in her own cooking show. So here's Arowyn's video of Mema making blackberry cobbler.

Mema making blackberry cobbler

Arowyn videotaping Mema 

making blackberry cobbler

Arowyn reviewing her video