This is a (r)Evolution | Brick à Brack

After the shooting...






This brickfilm was edited with iMovie’11. I exported all images on one big video file (in 16:9) with DragonFrame before importing it in iMovie. This gave me a single huuuuuge file with all scenes playing without any sounds. I had the script at hand while shooting therefore I was pretty happy with the overall flow of the movie, just added a few stops where our protagonist was talking.

It was fun to create a French AND an English version, something I’ve never done before. Sonjira is an excellent voice actor and it’s funny how we emphasized very different portions of the text. If you want to have a look at the other version it’s right here:

Consult it on Brick à Brack

The goal of this brickfilm was to make an Apple Keynote in Brick à Brack style, therefore for the music I mixed these two themes:

• Steve's Theme: Main Title
• 1984 Commercial

Both composed by John Debney for the film JOBS which came out in 2013.



All of this took me about 6 hours. The editing is my favourite part of the process, since it’s the part in which our legos finally come to life… just magical

The files were pretty big and took their sweet time to upload on YouTube but we finally did it!
I very much liked making this brickfilm and I hope you enjoy watching it.

Lightning:


For the lightning it was very simple, I just used one white lamp for the whole scenery and the tablet’s light. This setup had a few nice perks/gimmicks, especially the walk cycle at the start with the shadow in the back light.

You can click on the pictures to make them bigger!

And here is what this looked like:




The lightning is working, let’s enter animating...
I used DragonFrame 4 as animation software for this brickfilm, which might also explain why I was able to do it in such a short time… Frame rate is 12,5 and I made a total of 670 pictures.




The wide shots :

I currently have two lenses available to shoot: One for the wide shots (17-85mm) and one for the close ups (18-55mm + a magic tool I’ll tell you about in a sec). I never bought a macro lens, since these are really expensive.
But nevertheless I came up with an efficient solution for my brickfilms: The inverter adapter.



It’s an adapter you put in front of your lens, which allows you to mount it backward on the body. Saying it out like that may sound barbaric, but it works great. The biggest disadvantage is that you lose the the connection with the lens, therefore adjust the aperture carefully before mounting it this way.

Some examples:

Design of the protagonist and set creation:



For the main character I was hesitating between a minifig looking more like Steve Jobs and one looking more common, passepartout.

I chose the second one since it’s a minifg everybody here is accustomed to (with its nice suite) and we all can identify with

Here’s how I proceeded with the set creation: Something very simple, a plate, legos for the background and a tablet in between my bricks.



For the iPad as a background I was confident that it would yield a nice result since I’ve used this technique before for the iPod’s display in Behind The Door.




The tablet:

So, I needed to create two background images, one with and one without the logo of Brick à Brack.

The result is, I think, pretty neat. The reflections of the tablet add some realism. A simple technique which allows you not to waste a lot of time in post production.

In order to finalize the sections Preproduction, Production and Postproduction, I’ll write a few additional information regarding the creation of the brickfilm.

Friday, November 3rd (4 days before the English version of Brick à Brack goes live),
I’m returning home from my holidays in the USA. Terribly tired I realized that the site remained pretty active while I was away. My notification inbox was flooded. Too tired to care I decided to sleep a bit and recover some precious energy… A 9 hour time shift + 11h in the plane, that’s not easy to handle

Saturday, November 4th,
I spent my morning catching up with everything I missed on Brick à Brack. And in the forums visible for moderators only I saw a message by @Maxou44, who wrote: Tuesday November 7th, Brick à Brack in English.

During the evening I met with the staff on Discord and suggested a first scenario, following the idea of a “Keynote Apple” presentation. The idea was met with reluctant enthusiasm, since the other members of the staff though that I could never complete the brickfilm in due time. I persuaded them that I can do it (after all “Behind the Door” - 15min - was produced in a week) and we adapted the script, which was done around 11 p.m.. Only problem: It was in French. No problem, I quickly sent it to @Legoander to translate it, which he did promptly.

Sunday, November 5th, now we are talking business


Here are some additional pictures: