Song: Hazy Shade of Winter - Gerard Way feat. Ray Toro
Let me tell you a tale of how this whole thing came together. I suggest you get comfy as this is going to be epic.
Let's start by setting the scene. It's July 2020 and we were well into the Pandemic. I had been stuck at home on my own since March and as my family is in Australia, I couldn't create a bubble. So all entertainment came from my own head.
In short, if there was ever a time to come up with this idea and execute it. That time was now.
The list of things I have done to entertain myself in lockdown is long but like everyone, I too hit points where I struggled. My saviour? Music.
I love music. Doesn't matter if it's from Film, TV, Musicals, Dance, Rock, Pop, Classics, you name it, I will happily listen to it. Music soothes the soul. Period.
One evening I was sitting in the dark listening to music when I started to obsess over the musical breakdown of "Hazy Shade of Winter".
I don't know how long I listened to the song on repeat before it clicked but at some point, I started to notice a distinct breakdown of sections in the song where you could show two sides of a story. I wasn't sure about the overall idea yet but very quickly I had a solid vision in my head.
Next was storyboarding. I needed to know what exactly I was needing for sets, the type of shots I was looking for, and figure out how much time I had for each part.
Once I had the storyboard sorted, I started to think about how I was going to take this idea from my head and turn it into an actual thing. Money was a big factor in this so I needed something that would be flexible but cheap. The first idea I had was Play-doh. However, after making my first batch I thought this wasn't as good an idea. Took me a week to get the colour out of my hands.
I then thought about papier-mache. It was also cheap to make and I figured I could make everything I needed with it. I will say now that this in theory was a good idea.
The first thing I made was some mountain backdrops. However, I quickly realised that if I wanted wider shots I needed the sets to be bigger. Like WAY bigger.
I then went and made a MASSIVE background for the sky. I bought mesh, papier-mache on both sides (twice) and then painted one side blue and the other side black. Sky sorted. #winning
Next was an iceberg. This was the first real test to see if papier-mache was the right way to go. Below is the test shoot I did.
Looks great right! Sadly this is where I tell you that I have stupidly high standards. It's about the quality of the final product and for me, this wasn't going to quite hit it. Especially as I needed blue tac to help show the iceberg melting let alone how I was going to create people.
Back to the drawing board, I went.
Finally, I came to the idea of Lego. Had I thought about lego before? Yes of course. I love lego. But did I own any lego? No! Could I afford to buy lego..........
no comment.
Using lego did mean that I was going to reach the standard that I was looking for. However, as you will soon learn, it also introduced other hurdles.
Hurdle no. 1. The cost. OH, THE COST! (let's not talk about how much I may have spent...ever).
Solution: There was no real way around the cost except to take my time and shop around for good deals. I still had to eat and pay rent. Upside? I wasn't going anywhere so the money I was saving from not day-to-day travel to work or going out ended up going into this.
Hurdle no 2. Getting sidetracked with other ideas.
Solution: Accept you are sidetracked and create the idea. I have too many ideas in my head to count. So sometimes I just have to go with it before I can come back to what I was doing.
Besides, everything I made around this idea provided new learnings that I then fed back into the final video.
This is the first of many sidetracks that occurred working on this. While buying some furniture for the houses I bought a DJ set. I showed the DJ lego set to a friend, they said I should have batman behind the decks and well, I then went straight into production on making an unofficial music video for their band.
I spent two weeks on this project and also made another short video as well on top of that. I made all the sets from cardboard with the idea of thinking I would reuse them. Again it was a great idea in theory, but those high standards of mine meant that only one of those original sets made it into the final film.
As soon as I got the batmobile I had to make this. We all would have been disappointed in me if I didn't.
While making the back alleyway I was still waiting for Robin to arrive in the mail and was getting impatient. So I made this while I waited.
Now I know what you're thinking. Was this a waste of 4 hours? Probably, but if you watch closely you will see that the light changes dramatically.
Hurdle no 3. The war between me and light was about to begin.
After two weeks and finishing this project off I went back to the original video. Lego sets started arriving so while still using my kitchen bench at the time I started shooting. In short, I wasn't happy with them. Lighting issues aside it wasn't what I had in my head. Again, Damn my high standards.
The final music video I made is still pretty amazing I must say. I lost count of how many learnings I took from making this.
Song: Defy Me - Heavy Vibes
Side note: everything up until this point was shot on the kitchen counter and also on my iPhone 8 using the stop motion video app. It was also all edited in the same app as well.
By this point, we were well into October. Suddenly I decided not to proceed. I thought "Yeah this is a really great idea, but I don't want to spend any more money and it was just too big of a project." Yes, you read right, TOO BIG I TELL YOU!
So I walked away. yes, I walked away. I went back to writing stories and at this point, I bought a Nintendo Switch. Animal Crossing and Mario Kart became my life.
Then came the announcement from the UK govt. Lockdown 2.0! I'm sure we can all agree that we reacted in different ways. Some drank, others ate, some vented their outrage at Christmas being canceled on social media. I, on the other hand, went online and bought ALL THE LEGO!
Then began my living room looking like this (yes, I was also doing a puzzle - got sidetracked again).
Now the original plan was to spend Christmas and New Year's shooting the whole thing. Two weeks on leave, I was on my own, this was a good idea... in theory. I spent a couple of days sorting all the colours (which was rather satisfying) and then I started to build out some sets.
Building out the sets did not go as well as I had hoped. Partly was to do with my high standards but also again just not sure how I wanted things to look. It was a lot of trial and error. It was also at this point I decided to use the coffee table in the hope of more control over light and not completely losing the use of my kitchen.
Long story short after trying to build sets, laying them all over my living room floor, and then getting through Christmas I started to feel very overwhelmed by it. Seriously this project was just huge. It's not like I didn't know this going in. But I realised that I really just didn't know where to start with it. So there was only one thing to do. Pack it all away.
Yes I know, it's the second time I gave up. But I figured instead of trying to find my way through the fog and put myself through unnecessary stress I should just stop and come back to it when I was ready. I was never going to get my idea to come to life.
Roll into the new year. I went back to work and I was also well into writing Mission Stoppable. And before you say it, yes I know, it was another distraction.
With still being stuck at home and watching so much TV (so many shows and films watched the last year) The stop motion video idea is still strong in my head. To the point that I was struggling to focus on other things that I wanted to archive. So I accepted my fate, this was going to be stressful.
All lego was pulled out, random cardboard and other rubbish I thought I might need was also brought out and sprawled out over the living room. It was worse than before.
It was also around this point I got the new iPhone12 Pro. I wanted a good quality camera. Yes, that is my justification and I am sticking to it.
As you will know by now lighting was still a problem to solve. Looking back I think this was one of the many reasons I struggled to get this going I think.
Solution: Set up a mini tent on the coffee table in the corner.
I give you my solution!!! I will admit, it did have its drawbacks. But it worked. The biggest upside was that the lighting stayed consistent for longer.
This setup also proved useful for the 3 nights of night shoots I had to do for the globe and light pollution. I say three as the globe spinning at the end had to be reshot due to forgetting (yes I forgot) to do the zoom out at the start.
With this new setup, it meant that the mammoth task of shooting lay ahead. Below is a summary of everything I encountered for 3 months doing this.
Let's start with the sets. Every set you see I made from scratch and let me tell you, I procrastinated HARD on making some of them. Those high standards I tell you. It just had to be how I saw it. Some were easy for sure, but others did really need some out-of-the-box thinking for it to come to life.
For example, the light pollution you will see I tried a few different ideas but nothing really worked. I found that doing it with just a light shining up was the effect I needed. That's right folks, less is more!
The world I made from mesh and papier-mache. Painting the poles and sea was the easy part. Then I procrastinated on doing the countries. I was afraid I would not get it right. As with everything else I basically one day just sucked it up and went for it. I wasn't perfect but I was impressed with myself with the end result.
Unlike the globe, the detail for the news signs was done rather quickly. Why wasn't I as stressed about the detail on these as the globe I hear you ask? I have no idea. but once I had the backdrop sorted all I had to use velcro dots to swap each sign-out.
The city I had to build on the floor and then move into position as it was just easier. I spent half a day figuring this out. Honestly, I wish I had more lego to make the sets higher and bigger. I really wanted a nice zoom-out wide shot of the city. That didn't happen exactly as I had hoped but the set is still pretty epic. (The below photo basically sums up that day as 'building all the big sets day).
The residential street was the first set I tried to build out and ended up being one of the last shots I filmed. It was struggling to get the size and roof right. I didn't have enough lego to do either. It was a struggle. In the end, stripped it back and just used cardboard for the roof. LESS IS MORE PEOPLE, LESS IS MORE!
The Mars set I have to say I am rather proud of. The end result was just great. I reused the container cups that lego animals were stored in and for the rocks just painted paper from delivery boxes. Yes by this point I was getting the hang of my new mantra. Less is more. Guess the third time is a charm!
There were obviously many other sets in this but I think we can all agree that these ones were the most epic.
Hurdle no. 5. Representation is key to any project.
Making sure that I had a diverse cast was high on my list. As much as my high standards caused me grief during this process this was one of those times where it was the complete opposite. This is where lego went from being my savior to a massive thorn in my side.
The main problem was that I couldn't just buy individual black lego characters.
I looked online. Everywhere. You name it, I visited that site. That's not to say I didn't find any. If they were a character who was black in Star Wars or Marvel then yes they represented the characters who were black. The catch was that you had to buy the whole lego set it came with. Not on their own.
One site I found had loads of individual pieces. The cost of the item was say 3 pounds but to post it to me was like 10. 10 pounds. I cannot begin to describe my level of frustration. So very early on I did give up. I honestly thought I couldn't find anything to help represent black people in my video and to say this upset me is a true understatement.
I originally shot the opening with just yellow people. Yes for a short - just completely out of my mind - time I accepted that I would be able to represent everyone I wanted through yellow lego people.
However, my high standards meant that I just couldn't let it go. As I have said before, I am about the quality of something I create, and not having the level of representation in this meant that the quality was less than expected and that was just unacceptable.
Seriously, why was this so hard!
So off into the depths of the internet I searched and finally found some on eBay that was from the Marvel universe selling for a reasonable price. I was happy, I rejoiced like you wouldn't believe.
Hurdle no. 5.1. You are way more limited with their facial expressions than with yellow lego people.
In short, they all had stern faces. Which was great when they needed to run away or fight or something. I get they were Marvel and they were having to fight Thanos. The Snap was a priority. But they must have had some laughs at some point right? Even if it was at one of the other Avengers' expense?
Hurdle no. 5.2. Their hands, lack of coloured arms, and heads didn't always fit with the other outfits of the yellow lego people.
Finally, I had issues with their heads fitting or not fitting different clothes and their arms not fitting into their new clothes either. So if you see the black lego people with their hands slightly raised, it's because their hands didn't fit and if I lowered it they would just fall out. There was also the problem when I shot the beach as there aren't any black arms. So that also required some creative thinking to work around it.
Solution: ..............
Overall I found workarounds and managed to make it work. But this could have been way easier than it needed to be.
Another distraction entered at this point. Building out this website.
So to recap, I started officially shooting this in January with my living room looking like an overflow of popcorn from the frypan. Finally the second last week of April, I was down to the last few scenes. After the final shots of everyone inside their houses were done the shoot was over. It was a surreal feeling, to say the least.
It was all filmed on the iPhone12 Pro (remember I needed that top-of-the-line camera) and used the stop motion video app. I bought a clip tripod to put on the edge of the table so I could move it around. It also provided a light which was also useful. Especially on those night shoots.
Now, the edit. I used iMovie to bring all of this together. About a week before I finished filming I actually started the edit. The main reason was so that I could see where the gaps were. To my amazement, I didn't haven't much left to go. But it was things that I was procrastinating over that I had left to do. Such as the residential street and inside the houses. I also had to do some reshoots like the final world shot (that damn lighting again) and the opening sequence with the new black lego people.
Fun fact: The longest sequence I shot was the first 46 seconds. And was actually the opening sequence I shot. The quickest one was the climate change shots. They were failed pour paintings of a wave I was trying to do. However, it worked out in my favor and was able to reuse them to show the effect I was trying to show with ice melting #nothingwasted.
Now the ending. This was definitely the hardest to figure out as it had to land on the beat and have enough different scenarios to make it work. I think I counted it out at least 4 times as I kept miscalculating it. It was the same when the pace changed and I wanted each shot to be a second long. Again my original count was wrong so kept having to think of ways to fill that time.
I should probably admit here that maths isn't something I am good at.
Another benefit of starting the edit before I finished shooting was that once I had everything in order I just had to slip in the final scenes. Which then meant that when the last photo was taken, the edit was also done. Let me tell you, me, chocolate, jelly beans, and chocolate milk had a party like you wouldn't believe that night.
The next morning I awoke feeling like it it was day one of the rest of my life. The idea that had been living in my head for nearly a year was now out. I spent that weekend honestly not knowing what to do with myself. It was the first weekend since January where my life wasn't consumed by lego all over my floor!
I think we can all agree that I procrastinated/got distracted just as much as I did actually making the video. Of course, some of that was down to actually figuring out all the little problems that needed to be solved. More importantly, though being stuck at home and having to be on my own, I had to make sure that my mental health was taken care of.
In total, I took a total of 3081 individual photos. This includes reshoots, shots that were used, and shots that I also didn't end up using.
Is it perfect? No. Are there things I would change? Yes. There were some things I couldn't get or I would have preferred more lego to make it grander, but there had to be a line on what I could do (aka how much money I was willing to spend).
Will there be another?
Not right now. I have loads of ideas but not related to other stop motion videos.
But will there be in the future?
If the right idea comes along for sure!
In the meantime, I have a board full of other ideas that are awaiting me so till then I am going to go and work on those.
