Valentine's Day Content Idea (and a Few Failures)
It’s February, which means Valentine’s Day is around the corner! 💗 Whether you are celebrating family, romantic love, or love amongst friends, the colorful themes of Valentine’s Day (plus the abundance of chocolate) make it perfect for content creation and ideas. While this year’s Valentine’s Day is a little more low-key than normal, it doesn’t mean the content you make has to be!
Keep reading to learn about our Valentine’s Day content ideas (and failures) using our stop motion app, Life Lapse. Stop motion is the perfect vessel for exploring your creativity and mass-producing themed content.
Shoot Set Up
First, you’ll need to set up your shoot.
Our number one stop motion tip is to control your lighting! In this shoot, we started with a floor lamp and eventually moved on to our professional softbox light. But, the floor lamp is totally doable! The most important aspect of lighting is making sure you use artificial light instead of daylight: it’ll make your stop motion videos smoother.
For a tripod, you can use a professional tripod (see our faves here) or a DIY tripod. Just make sure your phone is stable!
Attempt 1: Styrofoam Blocks
we attempted to paint some styrofoam blocks to add height to different props used throughout the shoot. But, that didn’t really work out…so we had to scrap them! It’s okay though —part of the creative process is learning that things sometimes go wrong.
Attempt 2: Floral Bouquet 💐
We set up our lighting and backdrop but unfortunately…this was not the ✨ right vibe ✨ so we scrapped this stop motion idea. We encourage you to give it an attempt if you can —the colors were off for us, but we are sure this would work in another scenario.
Attempt 3: V-Day Card
A success. Finally! 🎉
What you’ll need:
iPhone or Android with Life Lapse
Valentine’s Day card
Paper hearts
Instructions:
Step 1: Set up your tripod and lighting. We are doing an overhead shoot for this one. Lock your exposure and white balance before you get started.
Step 2: Begin with your envelope out of frame. Slowly move the envelope into frame, taking photos between each movement. Once the envelope is in the center of the frame, take a photo of your envelope as it is closed. Open the envelope, and rotate the envelope slightly. and take another photo. Repeat the previous step, slowly rotating the envelope and taking the card out, little by little. Take photos in between each movement.
Step 3: Once the card is out of the envelope, slowly move the envelope out of frame.
Step 4: While holding the card down, we recommend taping it to your table or surface so that your card doesn’t shift between shots. Place the tape on the back so the camera can’t see it.
Step 5: Put something (we used a hair elastic) inside the card so it looks as if it is opening! Take a photo. Slowly have paper hearts come out of the card, taking photos in between each movement. Once they are all out, take the hair elastic or prop out, so the card is “closed”.
Step 6: Trail the paper hearts off out of frame, photographing between each movement. We had the hearts go up and around the card, to add variety.
Step 7: Repeat step seven, but with something that will raise the flap of the card even higher. We used two post-it notes we had on hand, but you can use anything. Like before, have paper hearts trail out of the card, and close the card. Move the hearts out of frame slowly, in a whimsical pattern. Take photos of each movement.
Step 8: The video started with an empty backdrop, so you want to end with an empty backdrop, so you can loop your stop motion perfectly. Slowly move the card out of frame (from the top) taking photos between each movement, until you end up where you started.
Step 9: Launch the editor, and make any adjustments you would like, such as contrast and filters. Add music if you would like as well.
Step 10: Share on social. Use the hashtag #LifeLapse or tag us @LifeLapse_app to show your masterpiece!
Thanks so much for keeping up with us through our Valentine’s Day shoot successes and failures. And if you were wondering why we chose to share our slightly embarrassing mistakes, here’s why:
So you can learn what NOT to do
Pushing creative boundaries requires taking risks sometimes. Although our vision for this set didn't work out this time, we will find another solution that DOES work.
Shit happens. In the video embedded above, you'll see our creative process to how we adapted and changed directions on the fly.
Don’t miss out! Take a peek at our blog for more themed holiday content ideas throughout the year.
