I thought they would be really hard, but they are just enormously time consuming.
We found out how to do a simple stop motion film when we were on a short break in Bristol - home of Aardman Animations who make the Wallace & Gromit films. There's a hands on science museum there with an area dedicated to stop motion. Loads of desks with little plastic characters and a camera positioned over them and the simple instruction - position the characters where you want them, photograph them, move them very slightly, photograph them again, etc. We did this, and then had the chance to view the finished movie and e-mail it home.
Of course when we got home, the tricky bit was working out how to actually make a film, as the science museum computer did all the work when we tried it first. You just upload all your photos to the computer (I think there's about 300 photos in that nativity play!), and use some video making software to join them all together (I think you can use Windows Movie Maker). Set each photo duration to about 0.6 seconds and you should have a reasonable film. I will try and do a proper step by step fact sheet when I have time but I am no expert. I'd like to get really good at it, but the camera's not great, the lighting is rubbish and my director is an absolute tyrant.
