Rabbits, post-its, green screens and stop motion animation – a week of work experience in LEaD

Recently I was lucky enough to undertake 4 days of work experience with the LEaD Multi-media team at City, University of London.

This was organised as part of my year 12 placement and was an opportunity to experience working in a University environment and to experiment with video creation and production, stop motion animation and using editing software.

Alongside my A-Levels in Biology, Geography and Photography I am also doing an EPQ (Extended project qualification) which can be used for additional UCAS points. The EPQ allows students to lead their own projects. Students get to plan and carry out research on a topic that they’ve chosen and isn’t covered by their other qualifications. They can take inspiration from something touched on in class or something personal and unrelated to their studies. They then use this research to produce a written report and, in the case of practical projects, an artefact or a production. (AQA 2019) I have a future interest in forensic science as an area I would like to go into, so my EPQ looks at the accuracy of the portrait of forensic science in TV shows.

As I am not very keen on writing essays I decided that I would produce a video artefact for my EPQ- so as part of my work experience and to kick-start my EPQ project the Multi-media team in LEaD let me loose in their Presentation Station to play around with the green screen and stop motion animation. Before I could get started on creating the video Steve asked me to create a storyboard so that we could decide on how I was going to animate the video. For my original storyboard, I centred it around a crime-solving rabbit detective, an idea that was manipulated and fine-tuned later on.

On my first day of work experience, I met members of the LEaD team, including Steve and Emma who I would be working with, we then had a meeting to generate ideas for what I was going to create during my time and discuss how I was going to organise and display these ideas, this is when Emma introduced me to some of the techniques of video planning where you come up with themes, a structure (split into start, middle and end, usually with 3 main points for each) and an overall goal. Emma and Steve also introduced me to the Presentation Station, I learnt how it worked and how it was used by different departments and academics to assist with learning and teaching. For the rest of this day, I mainly worked on post-its, generating ideas and coming up with a theme, start, middle and end, and an overall goal for my video. I decided to comment on many of the stereotypical elements of crime investigation shows, but keeping the bunnies from the original storyboard and using props while also keeping the overall goal of education on the forensic process. On this day I also got to sit in on a meeting with the rest of the Digital Education operations team to meet everybody and get an idea of how the workplace runs and what everyone does.

(Text on the page says) 1. Themes: Music Colours Design Humour Breaking down - start - middle - end 2. Structure start - #1 #2 #3 Middle - #1 #2 #3 End - #1 #2 #3 3. What is your goal? 4. Answer: Educate on how the forensic process actually works. With humour. — List of Themes, Structure and Goal

A number of different coloured post-it notes with writing on, stuck on a piece of paper titled "Structure" Begniing, Middle and End. Each post-it describes a part of the scene or an idea. — Post-it brainstorming to create Structure

A scan of a page of written text with details of each part of the video described in it under columns titled: Start, Middle, End — A list of scenes – Start x3 , Middle x 3, End x 3

On my second day in the office, Steve introduced me to a stop motion animation software (cloud stop motion), I then spent the morning using my Sylvanian families (The Independent 2015) rabbit props to make short clips to get used to the software and generate ideas for my own video. I really enjoyed using this software as I found it quite easy and fun to use and I liked the look and style of the outcomes, because of this, I decided I wanted to use this technique in my video. I also got shown the production booth and got to play around with the microphone and the software (Audacity). I found the software quite interesting but found that after a while I got quite sick of listening to my own voice.

An image of a Digital SLR camera on a Tripod structure - pointing down towards a desk with a background scene on a piece of paper and some toy rabbits (Sylvanians) — Playing around with stop-motion animation on a set-up in the LEaD office

Some toy rabbits on a coffee table infront of a green screen. There ia a digital camera pointing at them and a monitor to the side showing what is being captured through the lens — In the Presentation station creating animation in front of the green screen

In the afternoon, I moved into the presentation station where I set up using my Sylvanian family props and the greenscreen to start shooting my stop-motion animation, using the techniques I had learnt that morning. I found this experience fun as I chose to experiment as I went and follow the creativity.

On my third day in the office, I got to work writing the voice-over script for my video, creating title scenes and finding stock images to replace the green screen, I then got to sit in on a department-wide meeting before going back into the production booth with Emma to record my voice-over. After recording my voice-over, Emma introduced me to Adobe Premiere Rush (an Adobe video editing software) where I then learnt to cut and edit both my voice-over and my video. At this point, I started to feel satisfied with my video and proud of my work and shared the video with other members of the LEaD team, who suggested that stop-motion animation with characters could an interesting topic to cover as a Playful Learning activity (Secker,J 2023). I then left my video in the hands of the multi-media team to replace the green screen and make any fine-tuning edits.

On my fourth and final day, I worked from home and had an online meeting with Emma and Steve where we discussed the final video and my work from the week. I then interviewed them about their jobs and how they became Educational Technologists, to get a greater understanding of the role and how to get into that type of work. I then got to view the final video, I found it quite satisfying to see the final product of my hard work.

I want to thank the LEaD team for allowing me into their office for the week and Emma and Steve for taking the time to teach me these new skills and help me create my video, I feel like I learnt many new, interesting and useful skills during my work experience.

References

AQA (2019) Introduction: What is the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) Available at: https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/projects/project-qualifications/EPQ-7993/introduction (Accessed: 4 June 2024)

The Independent (2015) Sylvanian Families: How folksy ways and wholesome values captured a global audience Available at: hhttps://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/sylvanian-families-how-folksy-ways-and-wholesome-values-captured-a-global-audience-10114718.html (Accessed 12.6.24)

Secker, J (2023) Playful Learning a place of Fun and Joy. Learning at City Blog. Available at: https://blogs.city.ac.uk/learningatcity/2023/08/15/playful-learning-a-place-of-fun-and-joy/

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