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  • This is a 20-minute VHS tape about a LEGO character called Jack Stone.

  • When it came out in 2001, it was the first real computer-animated Lego movie.

  • but it hasn't aged that well.

  • "Incredible!"

  • "Fantastic."

  • Thirteen years later, The Lego Movie looked like this:

  • Let's watch that again.

  • This is 2001.

  • "There you have it."

  • And this is 2014.

  • "Yes, that's me."

  • That is a huge difference.

  • Here's how they made it happen.

  • My name is Grant Freckelton, I'm a production designer at Animal Logic.”

  • He's overseen the animation style of movies like Legend of the Guardians, 300, and more

  • recently, The Lego Movie, with co-directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord.

  • Chris and Phil were determined to sort of make sure the audience was confused about

  • what they were seeing.

  • You know is it actually stop motion, or is it CG film?”

  • And that became a big debate.

  • Before the movie came out, there was a lot of conversation about whether the movie was

  • stop motion or computer animation.

  • "It is, I would say 99% CG animation, but it respects the rules of stop motion animation,

  • and is designed to emulate that style.”

  • To understand what made that style so unique, you have to look back at what Lego movies

  • used to look like.

  • Early productions for themes like Bionicle, Star Wars, and Batman helped establish the

  • whimsical feel of Lego moviesbut the animation didn't fit the physics of the

  • toy itself.

  • There was this tendency to sort of treat the plastic like it was flexible rubber, which

  • meant that the characters could flex and move a lot more than they might be able to in real

  • life.”

  • That style is typical of more traditional computer animation, like what you'd expect

  • to see in a Pixar movie.

  • Take a shot like this, for example.

  • The background isn't made of actual blocks, plastic limbs are bending in ways they couldn't,

  • and the faces are a bizarre blend of skin-like texture and Lego geometry.

  • It doesn't look like a scene you could make at home with your own Legos.

  • Compare that to scenes from The Lego Movie, where everythinggunshots, smoke, water,

  • fire, explosions, clouds, even mud on the camera lensare all made up of Lego pieces as

  • they look in real life.

  • We respected the hardness of the plastic by not necessarily bending on the elbow, which

  • you can't do on a real Lego minifig.”

  • That means that any movement you see onscreen simulates the adjustment or replacement of

  • an individual Lego piece.

  • A joint or facial expression will never actually bend or stretchit'll either move slightly

  • or be replaced by another piece.

  • Early Lego movies lacked that level of discipline.

  • They struggled because they fought back against the limitations of the medium instead of embracing them.

  • But the creators of the Lego Movie saw things differently.

  • Characters that have limitations force you to find solutions and charming ways of doing things

  • in different ways.

  • I mean, look at R2-D2: he's like, the ultimate limited character, he's basically a bin

  • with wheels that makes beeping noises, and that's all he's got to work with.

  • And yet he's a really charming character and everybody loves him. Same with BB-8.

  • And other characters. Same with the Muppets, they're essentially sock puppets with googly eyes

  • that you don't really have much control over.

  • But it's from those limitations that you actually get a lot of charm.”

  • Every now and then, the Lego movie animators would let some joints overextend slightly

  • to make room for a nod or a shrug of the shoulders...

  • But overall, sticking to the plastic rule made for a believable movie.

  • You can freeze frame any part of the Lego Movie and look at a scene that you could practically

  • make at home.

  • We were always trying to echo and hark back to how a child might make a film.

  • So we would alternate between thinking like responsible filmmakers working on a large-budget

  • Warner Brothers animated film, and then we would suddenly approach a scene as if we were

  • like a kid animating in their basement.”

  • But the history of Lego movies actually does start with kids animating in their basements.

  • In 1973, two Danish cousins, aged 10 and 12, shot a short film called Journey to the Moon

  • on Super 8 film.

  • They made it for their grandparents' 50th wedding anniversaryand it's widely

  • considered to be the first time anyone made a motion picture with Lego blocks.

  • Note that thepeoplein this film are just little cylinder blocksthis was before

  • any version of the minifigure design came out.

  • Movies like this came to be known asBrickfilms.”

  • When fans were making these at home, they shot them in traditional stop motion.

  • Footage was usually shoton twos,” which meant that they would take 12 picturesadjusting

  • the characters every other frameto make one second of film.

  • Shootingon onesmeant taking 24 pictures per secondthis was usually reserved for

  • making faster movements like running look smoother.

  • When the Danish cousins sent their movie to the managing director of the Lego Group, they

  • were rewarded with a tour of the Lego factory and sent home with large Lego sets.

  • But Lego hasn't always had the most positive reaction to homemade fan films like this one.

  • Between 1985 and 1989, a teenage animator named Lindsay Fleay worked on a 16-minute

  • short called The Magic Portal.

  • He used borrowed equipment to shoot it in his parents' basement.

  • Before entering festivals and competitions, Fleay sent the film to Lego to see if they

  • were interested in doing something with it.

  • At first, Lego responded with a letter of approval.

  • But soon, the company started expressing legal concerns and issued a letter demanding Fleay

  • surrender all copies of the film within seven days.

  • Lego ultimately backed down, but Fleay had already missed out on most major film festivals

  • by then.

  • Fleay actually went on to work at Animal Logic.

  • He left before production on Lego projects began, but his movie had a huge influence

  • on the world of Brickfilms.

  • If you look at the live action portion of The Lego Movie, you'll see

  • Finn, the little kid, holds up a sort of cardboard tube and across the side is written Magic Portal."

  • The Lego Movie, of course, was a huge technical feat.

  • There are 15,080,330 animated Lego pieces and 182 unique minifigures in the movie.

  • Early mockups of buildings and vehicles were drafted on a free software called Lego Digital Designer

  • Later on, in the animation software Maya, each brick was given profiles for fingerprints,

  • dents, seam lines, scratches, and dust.

  • It's hard to imagine what The Lego Movie would be if it weren't for the legacy of

  • these early home experiments.

  • Where most animated films use soft lighting modeled after paintings, The Lego Movie's

  • lighting was harsh, replicating the actual lamps that animators like Fleay used.

  • Playful non-stop motion interludeslike levitation via fishing linewere part

  • of Journey to the Moon long before they appeared in The Lego Movie.

  • Even the final break from the Lego world into the real world to meet a human creator parallels

  • The Magic Portal really closely.

  • Ah, my film!

  • It's easy to miss on-screen, but The Lego Movie pays tribute to fan films in the background

  • of this scenethese four clips are shorts submitted by fans.

  • Look at all these things that people built!”

  • The homage was a nod to the fans.

  • By doing that, the movie embraced the idea that amateur creators matterand sometimes,

  • the way they handle source material is far better than the way major studios are used to doing it.

  • If you want to try any of this at home, you can actually use the same software that the

  • animators of The Lego Movie used.

  • It's called Lego Digital Designer, it's totally free off the internet.

  • When I talked to Grant Freckelton, he challenged me to make this sort of pig-drawn carriage.

  • I tried.

  • I got the pigs, I got the wheels, but not much else.

  • It's very, very difficult.

This is a 20-minute VHS tape about a LEGO character called Jack Stone.

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