Beth Skogen
Children learn the basics of stop-motion annimation in a seminar put on by Crestwood Elementary students — pros whose work will appear in upcoming film festivals.
You’d think that a story that features sibling murder, reincarnation, sex, and nation building would be a little too advanced for 4th graders. But then you’ve never met the stop motion animation team at Crestwood Elementary School. The students’ new short, Isis and Osiris, will be featured at the 2018 Wisconsin Film Festival. This afternoon, it’s on the screen at the Alicia Ashman Library where about 30 children from across the city have gathered to watch and learn about how the movies are made.
The lights come up and the student filmmakers, as poised as Golden Globe winners in sweatshirts, take questions. “Why was there an underworld?” asks one somewhat rattled boy. “Because Isis is based on an actual myth,” answers Crestwood 5th grader Jackson Vanderweide, as if to say, dude, you can’t just make up the underworld. (See a trailer of the film at isthmus.com.)
Off to the side of the student panel, Crestwood Art Teacher Luke Bassuener looks on. “Mr. B.,” as he’s called, created the stop animation program, which has major momentum. Not only will Isis and Osiris be screened at this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival, the Crestwood animation team was asked to create the official festival trailer that will appear before every film at the “Big Screens Little Folks” children’s programming.
Not bad for a school project that’s only 4 years old.
Today’s event is a hands-on workshop, with students teaching students. The main elements of the craft are in place all over the room: pre-created backgrounds, the cut-out main characters from the movies shown, the photo technology used to capture the incremental movement of players in a scene. Crestwood 5th grader Anya Vosberg is surrounded by a clutch of budding animators.
“I like writing the script best,” Vosberg says. “You want it to be true to the original but then you add your own little twist.” Even though the students portrayed ancient Egyptian mythology in their latest movie, the dialogue is contemporary and filled with comic bits, too. Vosberg references a character and says, “At the beginning of the scene we had her trip and fall.”
For Bassuener, the course work has been as much a math challenge as an artistic one. The first film created was the myth, Daedalus and Icarus.
“With our three 4th grade classes that meant we would have 15 groups of kids break the story down into 15 main events. Each of those events became a scene that one of the groups would have to animate.”
To insure consistency in appearance, all the characters are block printed, which introduces old school fine art into the mix. The students not only do the artwork and photo stop capturing, they write the story, voice it, and create the music.
Just as Bassuener sees the program as a way to cross-engage students in fine art and literature, Crestwood music teacher Shawn McMahon sees the movies as a way to expose children to classical music. Students create the art in Bassuener's class. They conjure the music in McMahon's.
While McMahon had the students base one of the project’s first films on the music of English composer Gustav Holst, “With Isis we first looked at the movie without sounds,” says McMahon. “And then the kids made the sounds on their own. I told them any instrument in the room can be used to create their score.”
Crestwood’s next film will be based on the story of Valkyrie, the Viking mythology. In the meantime the students look forward to the attention their latest work will get at the Green Bay Film Festival on March 4 and the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 5.
“I wish we could go to all the places where the films are being shown,” says storyboard specialist Megan Hansen. “It’s really nice to hear what people are saying about the movies.
Crestwood films have also been selected by: The Palm Springs International Animation Festival, The Weyauwega International Film Festival
Average length of production time for one movie: one semester.
Number of single snapshots in Isis and Osiris: 5,520
Mr. B.’s favorite part of the project: “The students are really able to rise to the occasion. The process always feels like chaos, but somehow it comes together.”
