Stop-Motion Video Party

Age of Birthday Boy: 11 years old
Age Range of Guests: 7-13 years old
Gender of Guests: Boys and girls

Potential Age Range of Theme: 6-14+ years, depending on specific focus & activities

This one was just plain fun!  We recruited some parents with cameras and tripods and some familiarity with video creation in a Mac computer to help us out and everyone had a great time. (If you have enough kids who have this knowledge you could run this party without as many adults as we needed. Actually, if we did this party today I think the kids would know more than most adults about this sort of thing)!

Invitations: The invitations were similar to this sign.  Instead of saying "welcome to..." it said "You Are Invited to The MacBeath Stop-Motion Studio". It was put onto black card stock and the movie reel image is actually a sticker found at Michael's Craft Store.  Party information was attached to the back.

Cake: So easy and it turned out great!  A 9x13 inch cake was tapered into the shape of a popcorn bag and covered with white frosting.  Red fruit rollups were used to create the stripes.  The popcorn label was created on the computer and printed onto paper to be placed on the cake. (You could do this all with fondant as well). We popped some popcorn and mixed it with with melted butter and melted marshmallows.  While it was still a little warm we shaped it onto the cake to look like it was overflowing the popcorn bag. Leftover popcorn mix was shaped into balls, wrapped in plastic wrap, and included in the goodie bags.

Activities: This party had one main activity: creating stop-motion videos using Lego as the primary tool.  As the party guests arrived they received a film crew ID tag to grant them access to the production set.

They were divided into 4 groups with an adult and a camera assigned to each group.  We ended up with three groups of boys and one group of girls who were siblings of invited guests.

They were given a brief demonstration of stop-motion techniques for those who had never tried it before (smaller movements between shots will produce a smoother look but take more time, ways to hide supports so it looks like a piece is in the air, keeping the background clean, etc).


Then they had time to create - approximately one hour.  Each group had a Lego base to work on, and a large pile of miscellaneous Lego pieces and characters to use in the video. The adults were instructed to step in only when needed to help keep disagreements to a minimum, to make sure everyone gets a say in the process, and to assist with camera work as necessary.  Basically though, they were the support staff.

The results were terrific and very creative!  We downloaded the videos to our computer while the guests enjoyed cake & ice cream. Then the groups took turns demonstrating their videos to each other.  A couple of samples are included at the end of this blog post if you care to see what they came up with in a fairly short period of time.

Goodie Bags: We used Dollar Store popcorn containers as the goodie bags.  Inside we put some Twizzlers, a chocolate bar, the sticky popcorn balls, and a bag of microwave popcorn for later.  They were also each promised a copy of the videos that were created at the party.