ROBINSON CRUSOE: FROM THE STORY TO STOP-MOTION

ROBINSON CRUSOE: FROM THE STORY TO STOP-MOTION 

We interviewed five students (4BL), Marika Bedont, Michela Canavesi, Clea Gjoni, Andrea  Lenna, Julia Zanzarelli, who worked on Robinson Crusoe (1719), a novel by Daniel Defoe  and then, as a group work, recreated the plot in an original and creative way. Robinson Crusoe was a man who wanted to travel around the world. One of his friends  invited him to travel with him but during their journey they were attacked by pirates and  he was taken as a prisoner and lived as a slave. They managed to escape and arrived at  an island of indigenous people. They lived there for a while but then they went back to  sea and they found a Portuguese ship, which took Crusoe to Brazil where he started a  plantation and lived for several years. Then he left again as he embarked on a slave gathering expedition to Africa but ended up shipwrecked off of the coast of Trinidad. After  living there for many years while trying to survive,  an English ship arrived and Crusoe was taken back  to England to his family. The students first read the book in class with their  teacher, Dr. Vincenza Leone, and summarized the  chapters identifying the most important events.  

After that they worked on the summaries by brainstorming together about the different  parts and Michela Canavesi made little sketches about  the most iconic scenes creating a storyboard. They developed those ideas using the stop-motion technique:  it consists of taking pictures of static objects in a frame,  in their case plasticine models, moving them around in  small increments while photographing each individual  frame at a time, and then putting them together creating  a video. After the shooting, they recorded the narrating  voice and synchronized it with the video.  The group worked on it for almost three months and the  classmates and the teacher really appreciated the product (play video). 

“We decided to use these plasticine models and stop-motion because it is a very particular  way to represent something, it lets you create whatever you want, and it is a visual  representation that can describe not only the events but also the emotions and the feelings  of the characters,” said the group. 

Matera Leo, Spata Lorenzo (3BL)