Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Brickfilm Works

Transcript

How Brickfilm Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: w charas of you, Chuck Bryant and Jerry and is
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: this stuff you should know? How's it going? He's going great, sir?
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: How are you pretty good? Yeah? Do you remember our
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Lego episode? I do. That is a great episode, classic
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and I highly recommend people listen to. It's where the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: name old Kirk Christiansen came us. Soon as I saw
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: that name, that just flashed me back. A great name,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: old yep O, l E. I think we should go
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: buy old Josh Clark and all right, Chuck Bryant, that's
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: definitely how it goes. Well, I'll bet you something. Chucker's
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: back in nine two when old Kirk Christensen founded Lego
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and Bill and Denmark Bill, when don't you say is
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: the name? Yeah? You mean when he founded Automatic Binding Bricks. Right,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: he didn't call him Lego at first? Um like it
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: was definitely more gratty. Yeah, well, he came up with
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: um Lego apparently, And I remember us debating this or not.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: But so I looked around and this is what I
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: see everywhere, including on the Lego site that lego is
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: two words leg goat, which means play well, g o dt.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: But lego also means I put together in Latin. I believe. Yeah, yep. Well, anyway,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: when he was coming up with this, I'll bet he
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: never thought these are going to be used to make
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: hundreds and thousands of short stop motion films are gonna
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: delight millions of people around the world one day. Probably
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: never thought about that, No, but they do. I wonder
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: what old Kirk thought when he stepped on one with
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: his bare feet. He thought, Yeah, he's man, this is
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: going to take off a lot of parents for the
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: next three thousand years. It's not fun, so chuck um.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you caught it or not. I
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: just made a reference to brick films. Did you catch
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the reference I did? Stop motion? Well, I guess the
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: animation really is what it what it comes down to,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what it is. One of the earliest forms
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of animation because, um, all it involves is moving something,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: taking a photo of it, moving it just a little
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: bit more, taking another picture, and doing that until you
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: want to kill yourself pretty much. And that stop motion
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: animation requires a lot of patients I've made a few
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: of them myself. And when I say a few of them,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I mean one complete one with my brother with g
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I Joe's with the Super eight. I made about probably
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: twelve seconds of one with Star Wars figures in my twenties,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and then about thirty seconds of one with Clay. I
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: built a little theater box set and everything made a
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: guy look great out of sculpie, and um, I think
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: he got out of bed, went over to the dresser,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I got a shirt, and like went and exited the door.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: And then I was like, I'm done. It's took so long.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: The rest of his day that you had the script
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: for is just no. Yeah. It looked good though, and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I was proud of it, but it's just not for me. Well,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: you need to post those on YouTube. Man, They're on
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: VHS somewhere. I can dig these things up. You need
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: to get them on the YouTube. The world can access
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: your VHS tapes. So what do I Just get the
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: VHS tape and I just bang it on my laptop
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: and it gets on YouTube. Okay, as long as there's
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: a black monol with in the background behind you, Yeah, yeah,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: it'll work all right. I'll have to try that. Uh
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: so you never use Legos though, never use Legos um.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: But I do think Legos are made for this kind
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of thing because not only do they click into place,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: which is key because you don't want stuff moving around,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: but they these days they are all kinds of pre
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: packet Lego sets that are just little film sets waiting
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: to be made into movies. Like I mean that that's
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: probably the reason why it took off so much, because
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Lego keeps building these sets that are like Harry Potter
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: sets or Star Wars sets or Marvel Superhero sets, um.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: And then there's Lego competitors like Mega Blocks that has
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: licenses for like the Halo video game series or Hello
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Kitty or Barbie. Right. Yeah, so all you have to
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: do is get like a one of these packages, one
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: of these sets, and all of a sudden you have
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a movie set. If you have a lot of patients, uh,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: camera of any sort really is we'll see, um and
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: something that animated with basically a light source, not a
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff you can get. When I was doing it,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: it was about as bare bones as it got. It
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: was working on a tabletop with a couple of you know,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the little clip on aluminum light you get at the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: hardware store. You can use those. What are those worklights?
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Work floods? Yeah, just a little worklights. They get hot,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: they sure do. Um, and I didn't have any, you know,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I had a tripod and a camera because you want
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: to keep things super still. Definitely need a tripod. Definitely
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: need a tripod. Or if you are fancy or have
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: friends that are fancy and have a slider, you know,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: it's it's basically like a little mini dolly that your
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: camera can sit on in there, you know, three to
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: four ft long, and then you can do little dolly
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: moves and camera moves on your slider and keep it
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: nice and straight. Or if you have some ingenuity, which
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: you probably do if you're making a brick film, you
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: can make your own little skateboard dolly out of skateboard
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: wheels and PBC pipe. Yeah, you just make a little
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: track and then um attached like you know, you basically
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: you can. There's a lot of ways can do it,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: but like a baseboard to sit the camera on with
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: track wheels to guide along the PBC pretty neat. So um,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about specifically our brick films and one
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: of the There aren't a lot of requirements to make
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: a brick film aside from what you're saying, but one
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: of them is that legos have to kind of feature prominently.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Most brick films are stop motion, and one of the things,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: in addition to having like Harry Potter sets or um
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: outer space sets, are all these different sets that are
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: like many movie sets right out right out of the box.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Um are the mini figures. Um there, those are your
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: actors typically. Yeah, they didn't come along to the late seventies. Yeah,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and then now I think they're the largest population on
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the planet. Oh really, Yeah, I remember there's like four
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: billion of them or something like that. You know, they
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: made more tires than anyone else. But yeah, that doesn't
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: surprise me. Yeah, I came along. My lego experience was
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: pre uh figure. So we had to we had to
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: make our own little men and women out of smaller
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: legos in the snowy ways. These make sense, they look cooler. Yeah.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: So most brick films are stop motion. Some people actually
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: filmed the the um lego figures and characters moving, I
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: would guess, so I would think it's not quite as
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: time consuming though wire work and stuff. I bet it's frustrating.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: But I mean, if you have like all of your
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: lego figures on roller skates or something, you just kind
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: of drag them along. Sure, you don't have to take
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: picture picture picture. You kind of film them moving with
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: stop motion. That's very it's much. It's the opposite. Basically.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: It's like you said, you you set up your your
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: your shot, you take a photo of it, and then
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: you move the person a little bit, like if they're walking,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: you would move their arm, one of their arms down,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: another one up, and one leg out a little bit,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and the other one back a little bit, and then
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: take that picture and so on and so on and um.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: What you're ultimately doing is recreating motion, right right, um,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: using inanimate objects. And the way you recreate motion is
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: by the frames per second, which is a film speed,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: and film shoots it or plays I should say, at
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: twenty four frames per second, which means that every second
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: of film you see, you're actually being shown twenty four
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: still photographs in secession. Yeah, that's for film. Video is
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: thirty frames per second. And there are there are variations
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: on all this to achieve different looks, you know. Um,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: but if you are just doing the math if you
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: want to do a stop motion film, a five minute
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: stop motion film at twenty four fps frames per second
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: would be seventy two individual photographs. Right, that's for five minutes.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Five minute film. Means you have to take that many
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: photographs in order and in between photographs. You can't just
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: sit there and take shotographs. Rust just gonna have seventy
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: two hundred of the same pictures. There's seventy two hundred
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: slightly different pictures where one is slightly different from the last. Yes,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: one way you can cheat that a little bit, um
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: is if you just double it up and you use
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: two frames um for each move. So you would take
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: twelve pictures for a second of um video, right, well,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: and then just use them twice and that would make
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: it a four second, four frames per sent. Yeah, it's
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: gonna look a little more herky jerky, but um, the
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: nature of the brick film is a little herky jerky
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: anyway because of the way they move and the the
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: range of motion on the little figures. So it's not
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: like if you took completely bendable action figures. You know,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: you can get a lot more smooth, detailed moves. Yeah,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: people aren't expecting your lego thing to move completely seamlessly.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: That's not how legos move. They've got I think four
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: four points of movement. Yeah, their shoulders and their hips. Okay,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: so they don't have like elbows or knees, and then
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: technically you can say their head has a range of motion. Five.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: You just acted out a lego movement. It's very adorable.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Which people could see the stuff? Josh, thanks man. All right,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: well let's take a little break here in um, get
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: back to some lighting techniques right after this. All right, Josh,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: you've you've built your You've got your Ghostbusters lego kit,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Lego brand kit. Right. Um, you want to make a
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: seque old to Ghostbusters because Ghostbusters too was horrible? Not true?
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Did you like it? Sure? It was a Ghostbusters movie.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: It was great, boy, So you want to make Ghostbusters
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: three because you thought two was so good it deserved
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: its own sequel. All right, Um, and you want to
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: get some lights already said you can. You can go
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: cheap and just get those little aluminum lights if you have,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: if you really want to get serious, you can rent
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: lights from a camera house. You can go to your
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: friend Scott's sure be like, I know you have some lights. Yeah,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: or here at how stuff works. We have the use
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: of lights. Yeah, if you're making a brick film, drop
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Bible'll lend you some lights. No, don't do that. Um. Basically,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: lighting is gonna do a few things. It's gonna light
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: up your set so people can see it a uh
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: and be. It can help you set a mood for sure,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: like whether it's day or night, or noir or sunny,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: like a bright sunny day. Uh. And what you're really
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: looking to do, though, is have complete control of your
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: your lighting, because one thing that can really thwart your
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: brick film is any change in lighting. You won't notice it.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: You'll just take your little picture and then you'll see
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: flickering going on when you play it back. And that's
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: because someone turned on a light in the other room
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: next to you and you didn't notice it. So you
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: want to black out all the curtains. Just get in
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: a room where you have complete control over the lighting. Yeah.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: That's the same reason why you don't want to shoot
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: a brick film or any kind of stop motion outdoors,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: because the sun changes its lighting to be impossible fairly
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: regular rate yea faster than you can shoot and move. Um.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: So yeah, you want to totally be able to control lighting.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: So once you have your lighting under total control, you
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: want to use usually about three lights at least. Put
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: on your black turtleneck, yeah, or like your black roots
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: suit or something like that. Ye even better, uh huh.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: And and don't let anybody see like that, because they're
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: gonna be like, you're a total weirdo locked away in
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: this room with no windows, wearing a black roots who
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: playing with your light lego mini things And you'd say, no,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I'm a filmmaker, right, brigg filmmaker and they would just
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: back out of the room slowly. Yeah, exactly. So, Um,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: you you use one light for backlighting, use that behind
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: the thing behind your shot. You um have a key
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: lighting which is the front. And then you also want
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: to have some sort of bounce and um you can
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: basically replace that third light source with even just like
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: a white sheet of paper something to reflect light off
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: that that's very mobile, so you can director wherever you
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: need it. And the whole point of this is to
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: light normally, but also to chase off shadows. Yeah, if
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: you've never let anything, you're going to be frustrated at
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: first because you're lego characters are gonna have like two
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: different shadows going in two different directions, and the first
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: thing you're gonna think is, well, that doesn't look like
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: real life. So you can do two things. You can
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: experiment around with your phil lights until you get rid
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: of your shadows, or you can get a book or
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: look on the internet. Just some very basic lighting techniques. Um,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: it's not super complicated. It's nobody tough to get like,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: really good at it. It's not necessarily intuitive where you're like, oh,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: this guy looks like a soccer player in a night game.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: He's got four shadows everywhere exactly, So how do I
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: get rid of that? Oh, it's this bounce. I would
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: say this would be one of those times when it's
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: best to just rely on the wisdom of others who
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: have come before. Yeah, and that wisdom on the internet.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: The yeah, exactly. Um, the the lights too, you're gonna
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: want to diffuse it. It's it's probably gonna be way
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: too harsh coming directly off the bulb. So um, you
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: can use like wax paper or a handkerchief or in
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: anything that doesn't catch on fire. Uh ideally, Yeah, and
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: you do in your grandfather's room and get a handkerchief
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: out of his gesture drawer exactly with the initials H monogrammed.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: It's old krusty brown snot Yeah. I used to think
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: that was so gross when I was a little it is.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: It's like, oh man, they're blowing their nose and they're
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: putting it in, they're puttying it away for safekeeping. Gross.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: It was a less wasteful generation, though they didn't fill
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: a plan fills with clinics. That is true, you know,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: so it took I pretty much feel like we just
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: gave a great clinic on lighting. Yeah, shoots some test footage.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Don't dive right in there, you know, monkey around with it.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're gonna be really mad or your thing's
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: gonna look terrible at first, and then get progressively better
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: as the final final thing goes on. Say yeah, you
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: want to learn by doing yeah, and yeah, just do
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: some exercises, all right. We talked a little bit about equipment. Uh,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: they are all kinds of cameras you can use. Um.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: What I used on the last one, which was super handy,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: was a camera that had a remote control so you
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: could just click off the photos without having to touch
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the camera. That is very advisable. Yea. Once you have
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the camera set, it's really nice to not touch it
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: again if you don't have to. Yeah, because again you're
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: moving the stuff within this world, not the camera, at
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: least for the shot you're taking. And again, if you
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: if you have a three second shot, that's what seventy
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: two photos you need to take from that exact same position. Yeah, right,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: So yeah, you don't want that camera to move at
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: all or else is gonna be some weird jarring and
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. And the best way to do that
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: is a remote capture camera. That really helps. Um, if
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: you have an auto focus slash manual focus, you want
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: to turn it off the auto focus, make it fixed focus,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: manual focus you can. Again, you're just looking for complete control,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: uh auto focus little you know, you don't want to
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: focus on the wrong thing, especially if, like um, your
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: your many figures coming closer to the camera every time.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: That's gonna change that auto focus and you're every every
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: photo in the frame is gonna look slightly different or
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: fuzzy or just completely changed from time to time. Not good. Yeah,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: you're after consistency, uh, consistency through control pretty much if
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: you have a digital zoom camera you want to you
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: want an optical zoom? What is that? Uh? It's basically
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: I think a digital zoom simulates the image rather than
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: it being actually so it digitizes the zoom at a
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: certain point and it's not as high quality now it
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: looks it always looks crutty in my opinion. So, yeah,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: you want to control, so a true zoom basically you
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: remember the camera, yes you know, yeah, creep that little
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: thing in like a dolly right, or if you have
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: your slider you're all set there, so where you can
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: say it's like a what you basically want to be
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: like Nikolai cho Chesk or eat a mean of of
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: your mini films set here? You want like total control
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: over everything. I thought you were gonna say, like Orson Welles,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: like he's to even worse. Okay, Uh so we talked
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: about bumping the camera. You also don't want to bump
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: your film set. Yeah, I mean that can really ruin
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: your day at the end of a long day if
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you bump it and all your stuff falls over. So
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: clamp that stuff down, clamp your set down, glue it down,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: do whatever you have to do to keep it as
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: ruded as possible. Yeah, and don't let anyone anywhere near
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: it now because it's my lego set and I'm the outdoor.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So we've got some more stuff, some more awesome UM recommendations,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna get to it right after this, Chuck,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I really feel like we're helping a lot of people here.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I think so too. So we talked about lighting, we've
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: talked about the kind of camera equipment you watch or
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: UM and a lot of well, especially the Brick film
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: which we'll talk about later, UM, are silent. They're silent films,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: which means you don't have to worry about sound. But
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of them that do have sound, dialogue
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: all that stuff, UM, and you don't have to worry
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: about recording that as you go along. Most of the
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: sound can be recorded in post production, but you want
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: to have an idea of what is going to be
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: said where or what what your soundtrack is going to
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: be like, because you have to figure out how long
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: each shot needs to be and how many ultimately how
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: many photos you need to take within a given scene
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: or else, like the voiceover is still going when you
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: just change scenes and your your entire family and friends
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: will laugh at you. When you show them your brick film.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: You don't want to be the Edwood of brick films.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: He just did not care. He didn't care. It was great.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: That movie was great. My favorite or one of my
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: favorite parts, aside from everything Bill Murray did, was when
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: tour like bumps the wall in the way in and
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: they're like, don't you want to shoot that to or
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: just walked in the wall, He's like, no, I like it.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: It's real. Let's use it. Um so expressions and drama.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: These little lego folks aren't super expressive in the face,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: but they suggested in this article, and it kind of
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: makes sense. Pop that head off and put on something else,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: you know, could be a pink pong ball that you
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: draw faces on. Well, there there are different many figs
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: that have um different expressions yea, and so you can
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: just interchange their heads. Okay, So if someone needs to
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: look up horrors, put on the horror face. Um. And
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: then apparently there's companies that will customize facial expressions on
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: your mini figures. Yeah. And I imagine if you have
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: some money and you can get that done. That's right. Uh,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: And now I want to go not off topic, but
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: off article and say story, story, story. If you are
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: going to make a brick film or any film, have
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: a good story. Just just because it's a two minute
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: lego brick film, it's gonna stink if it's just you know,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: no matter how good it looks, it's not gonna be
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: fun to watch unless you have a good little story.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So like, write something out that's good and engaging or funny,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't have to be super long to have
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: a little character arc or story arc. Have your guy
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: chased by something else. Yeah, Like I watched one the
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: other day and it was it was fun, It was silly.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: It was a one lego guy helping the guy next
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: door do all his chores. Is that the the dandelion? Oh,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know the name of it. But he was,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: you know, helping him mo and helping him put on
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: shutters and doing all this stuff and all the while
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: like his home was getting beaten up, and it was
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: just you know, that's all they needed was that one
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: little joke at the end that they showed the nice
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: house and then the house in tatters. It's a very
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: in Randy and brick film. Was it don't help your name,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: your own house will fall the pieces if you help
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: your neighbor well to take care of yourself. The character
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: was John Galt, so there may be something there. Um
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: So anyway, yeah, story just uh, I would encourage you
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: to make something engaging, uh, and then make it look good. Yeah,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: all right, that's my soapbox moment. That was great. Thanks,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: that was good stuff. All right. So we're onto software, Yeah,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: I think so, because, um, you're going to find very
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: quickly when you have shotos, you need a way to
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: turn them into a video. They don't just automatically turn
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: into a video like that. And you can't just do
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: a flipbook on the internet because you'd have to shoot
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: that anyway and run it through software eventually. So you
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: might as well not go to that extra step. Just
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: get yourself some stop stop motion um animating software, and
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: there's plenty of them out there. There's some that cost
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: tons of money, some that are free. Lego has one, yeah,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: called Lego movie Maker. Yeah, it's a little app you
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: can make your own little big encourage the making a
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: brick films of course, right, So depending on the kind
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: of software you have there there's some that will automatically
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: import from your camera. There's some that will. Um, that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: has something called onion skinning, which shows like a transparency
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: of the last shot over the current shot, so you
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: can make sure everything's going the way you need to say,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: if you need to stop and reshoot one of those photos,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: you know you can real quick. Um, it's got to
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: be super helpful to have that. And the whole thing
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: is gonna put it all in order, animated, and then
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: it's probably also going to have some sort of whiz
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: bang features, Like there's one called rhodoscope which makes things glow,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: which comes in very handy if you're doing a Star
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Wars brick film and you want to make the lightsabers glow.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. Some of them might have other little
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: c g I tricks built in, or you can do
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: some low fi c g I of your own with
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: a little uh investigating and learning on the YouTube. Uh,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: it's not super hard to learn a couple of basic things.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: And again, these are brick films. This one that I
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: watched had some low fi like fire effect, and um,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: you know it looked it looked great for what it
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be. You know, it's not supposed to
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: be a Hollywood action thriller. It's a brick film, so
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: it can look kind of campy and corny and it
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: still works. Did you ever see the Matrix brick film? Now?
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: It was a good Yeah. I think it's it's not
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: even like a shot for shot thing of the matrix.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: It's like a like in addition to it, it's super
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: gory and um, it just incredibly well done. It is
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: like Hollywood action thriller brick film. Nice. You have to
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: check that out. Well, there's hundreds and hundreds, I would
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: say thousands, thousands at this point brick films. The first
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: one that they I watched this one. Actually in the
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: ninety three, Lars and Einrich Hassing made a little super
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: eight brick film called Journey to the Moon, and um,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you know it's cute. It's uh, it's actually mother, it's
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: like kids playing around. But and then it looks pretty good. Yes,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: and the especially when you consider that they were doing
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: a film, yeah, and using like film editing software and
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: stuff to put this thing together. It's kind of mind
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: blowing that these two kids put this together and made
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: basically the first brick film. What's more, since it was
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, this was five years before the mini
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: figures came out, so they had to build their own
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: characters out of legos to good stuff. And then there's
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: another classic brick film from the late nineteen nineties by
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Lindsay Flee and I think the late eighties. What I
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: say late nineties, Yeah, late eighties is what I'm at,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: the Magic Portal, and that was shot on sixteen millimeter film. Uh, yeah,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: it looks great. He's a he was a film student
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and actually got money from a grant from the Australian
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Film Commission, and um, a bunch of people donated lego
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: sets and it looks really good. Yeah, and it took
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: them years to do it. It took um, I think
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: more than a year to just shoot the photos. Yeah.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, now you know why my films were all
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: twelve seconds long, you know. Yeah, this one's like sixteen
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: minutes long. Crazy. What are some of the other big ones,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Star Wars, the Han Solo Affair, Yeah, a lot of stars. Yeah.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Have you seen Monty Python on Holy Grow shot for
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: shot of the Camelot song this, and like, not only
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: is it shot for shot, it's so great. They got
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the lighting correct on every shot. Like it's not like
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: there's some inside Lego World. It looks like they took
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the original Monty Python this minute and fifteen second clip
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: and like ran it through like a Lego Lego Nader. Wow,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Like they got the lighting perfect. You gotta see it, man,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: it's probably the best one. I have to check that out.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: And there's some really great ones out here, like again
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: that Matrix one. I'm amazing. But um, and I have
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: to say I am a fan of the Magic Portal
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: now yeah, um, but this Monty Python one is just
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: it's just mind blowing. And that was by spite your face.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: They seem to be the premier brick film studio. Yeah,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: they do. Uh, they've done a lot of them. Um.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I was about to remark about the attention to detail
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: and like the Monty Python thing, but I think that's
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: by nature what you're getting with these people who make these.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: If you don't have an attention, like a scary attention
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: for detail, you're not gonna be working in stop motion anyway.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: So that's why Stuffed By, like Nick Park and Ardment
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Animation did Wallace and Grommet and the Creature Comfort series,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: they look like the detail is so great because that's
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: just their deal. California raisins remember then, Oh yeah, good
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: attention to detail. Yeah. Uh did you see the Lego movie?
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't either. Hurdle was great, Yeah, I
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: want to see it. But um, is it a brick
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: film or not? No? No, no it's not. It was
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: all c g I s. Brick film doesn't have to
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: be stopped motion, but typically it should be in at
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: least like it should be real life Lego figures, not
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: c g I ones. But um, apparently it had plenty
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: of homages to brick films in general. Yeah, I didn't
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: know that. I think that's kind of neat. Yeah. So
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the impression I have from researching this is that Lego
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: as a company is very aware of brick films, obviously
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: because they have the movie maker app They love it.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: They give a ward out for brick films. Um, and
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: in the Lego movie, it was kind of a tribute
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: to brick films, a little tip of the old cap.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Old Kirk Christensen would have been like, oh, yeah, Lego
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: loves this stuff. You know, make a Star Wars one,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: make a Ghostbusters one, making Indiana Jones one, bye bye bye,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: don't make three Star Wars ones. Who would do that
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: make a Star Wars and the Ghostbusters and a and
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: a Planet of the Apes. Yeah exactly? Uh, you got
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: anything else? Mean? Nope? Brick films again. This is another
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: entry in our quest to explain absolutely everything there is
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: on Earth and beyond. So enjoy it, everybody, right not.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: If you want to know more about brick films, you
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: can type that word one word into the search part
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. But even more than that,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I would encourage you to just type that word into
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: your favorite search engine and sit back and start watching
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: brick films. Delightful. They are amazing. Uh. And since I
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: said your favorite search engine, it's time for listener mail.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this jokes to her husband. Hey, guys,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: to listen to the podcast on revenge this morning as usual.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed. It made me think of a revenge
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: story in my own life that backfired, uh then became
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: something pretty amazing. My wife and are big jokesters. When
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: we found when we were first married, my wife thought
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: it would be funny to throw a bucket of cold
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: water over me while I was taking a shower. I
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: told her that revenge is a dish best served old,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: which is, by the way, one of my favorite uh
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: sayings of all time UH and that my revenge would
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: come tenfold. So about three years and two children later,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: my wife took a pregnancy test, afraid that she was pregnant.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Since our son was three our daughter was nine, my
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: wife was a bit freaked out at having another kid.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Tests ended up being negative and she was relieved. She
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: left the pregnancy tests in the back of the toilet
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: went to grab its center while she was gone. Using
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: a pen, I was able to make the pregnancy tests
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: look positive and put it back where she left it.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: I never will forget the look of terror on her
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: face when she eventually saw it came walking to the
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: room with the test. I immediately started joking with her
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: about how exciting it is and really playing up the ruse.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't let her dangle too much though, before telling
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: her the truth. It was a good time and last
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: for had by all. One month later, she actually was
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: pregnant and quickly found out that we had twins. So
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: to this day she playfully blames me for our seven
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: year old twin boys. It was a great uson in
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: karma and the aftermathod of revenge isn't always a bad thing.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: This world wouldn't be the same without our two little guys.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: What a sweet dude. So that Danny DeMarco started off
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: as kind of like a jerky thing to do, but
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: it turned out great. Nice Thanks Danny DeMarco from Dallas.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Great name to Danny DeMarco, di Dallas. If you want
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: to get in touch with this like Danny did, you
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: can tweek to us at s Y s K podcast.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: stuff Podcast to how Stuff Works dot com and has
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.