A Valentine's Day Stop Motion Video Starring: Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Earlier last month, one of my photographer friends, Justin contacted me about collaborating with him and his photographer friend, Jen on a special Valentine's Day project.  Now, for my new readers, Justin is the same budding photographer who shot these amazing photos of my desserts this past summer.  Did I really have to think twice about working with two talented photographers who shoot gorgeous photos?  I think not.

The idea was to create a fun stop-motion video using some type of dessert to illustrate a sweet Valentine story and bring a smile and a bit of love to all of you.  If you'd like to know the details of how the video was made, continue reading after the video for the "behind-the-scenes" story and photos.

We hope you enjoy the video - feel free to share it with your family & friends for Valentine's Day!

For those not familiar with stop-motion, you probably should just click on the Wikipedia link for a better definition but I'll try to explain it in laymen's terms.  Basically, it's a technique used to animate objects by physically placing them into your desired position(s) and taking a photo of it while it's stopped at each position so that when you put all of the photos together, the final product results in the object "moving" on its own.  Kind of like those flip books we all used to make by doodling (stick figures, anyone?) on the corner of our notebooks in school - when you took all of the pages and flipped them, the figures animated like a cartoon.

[Photos by Jennifer Sosa Photography]

In our project, we took red velvet whoopie pies and had them "dance" by taking them one by one and moving them inch by inch as Justin took photos of each movement, frame by frame.  If it sounds like a tedious process, it kind of is - whoopie pies can't move themselves! But we had a lot of fun with it and in the end, all of the photos put together create this really neat stop-motion video! I forget the total number shots that we ended up with but in a typical stop-motion video, there can be thousands of photos depending on the complexity of the story.

Our storyline was simple but sweet - it was pretty much Jen's brilliant idea...I just provided the whoopie pies and the space!  As you saw in the video, I created round whoopies to depict the everyday "normal" person that finds that "perfect" partner in life.  But really, there's no such thing as perfect... hence, the non-round, heart-shaped whoopies.  Even though it wasn't like the rest of the whoopies, it was still special and found the "perfect" partner just right for them.  Awww... 

Thank you, Justin and Jen for including me in this awesome project - it was so much fun to work with you guys and to see just how much time and effort goes into these creations!  

If you have a moment, check out Justin & Jen's work - you will be blown away!

Jennifer Sosa Photography

Justin Lee Images