Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
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BRAWL 2017 - Acclimation
Here's my BRAWL entry!
Just because I'm curious, if anyone wants to tell me how they interpreted this video, that'd be really cool.
Last edited by twickabrick (July 2, 2017 (10:02pm))
Good animation and lighting as always. The issue is, due to it's blurriness, tight shots, and fast cuts with no breaks from those it become more irritatingly distracting than intriguing. This would work amazing as like a dream sequence or flash back in a bigger film, or broken up by easier to make out shots in a smaller one, but alone it just ends up being confusing.
I really wanted to like it but it felt like if someone held a nice looking thing, but held and waved it so close to your face that you couldn't tell what it was and you ended up wanting to swat it away or leave.
EDIT: After watching it like 6-7 times I began to be able to make out a plot, but it was annoyingly hard to make out due to the non-stop techniques mentioned earlier.
I'm guessing the guys running the place have created or found a device/artifact that causes people to worship it by affecting their minds (shown by the blue eyes) and they test it on some captives by bringing it in and out of the prison while monitoring it with the cameras. One prisoner touched it, rebels, gets tied up, then escapes.
With all your brickfilms, and with this one in particular, the attention to detail as well as the subtleties in the animation are remarkable. From the man eating with the fork, to the button push, to the ground moving in the last shot, each movement is very well executed.
The sound design is also excellent. I admittedly got a bit frightened while watching the first time around, which I attribute almost entirely to the immersive soundscape.
There's some really neat storytelling going on as well. I like the idea of relying on the visuals to decipher the story.
The set design and lighting are also noteworthy and important components of the film. They create a truly captivating environment. It was great looking through the behind the scenes pictures to get an idea of how you set up some of the shots.
All in all, fantastic blend of lighting, animation, set design, and sound!
END films, interesting interpretation, not what I had in mind at all. I figured
they were prisoners or labrats of some sort, and when one would be taken, he'd be turned into carbs and water, then redilevered as food. The guy who caught onto what they were doing was hung upside down. On my first viewing, I thought he escaped, but watching it a second time, it's a little ambiguous as to whether he did escape. Of course my interpretation doesn't explain the hypnotized eyes. Also, when he tries to escape, he disturbs the ground, so are they all dead, and is he trying to escape death into the land of the living?
Generally, I'm not a huge fan of these types of films. I don't mind murky, vague plots that leave the audience to piece togther exactly what happened. I think that there is something of an art involved in making such films, though. You really need some sort of balance. It's hard to enjoy a film so vague that you're left wondering if even the director himself knows exactly what's going on.
Regardless, this film was extremely well made on a technical level. The unnerving use of inverted camera shots and the use of a forced perspective, brick built minifig arm were particularly striking and unique.
Anywho, that's just my two bits on it. Still a great film, I just wish I could have enjoyed it more. Best of luck in the contest.
Really enjoyable watch, it felt like a mind trip. 
It kind of has the Kubrick effect that Mighty Wanderer's Draw had. Even if it's really confusing and unclear as to what on earth is going on, it doesn't mean it isn't a work of art that should be appreciated for what it is, at least on the technical level.
I'm not going to pretend I have any idea what is supposed to be happening, but maybe I haven't really seen it enough times to come up with any interpretation yet. As a work of film making, I must say it looks fantastic, and has the right amount of atmosphere to hook you in. The animation is beyond perfect.
As a whole, I think my favourite entry still stands as MBStudios' Life, but if I were to judge soley on the visuals, and technical skills, this would probably rank as the best brickfilm of 2017!
Forgot to post on this after the results, but this was my favorite entry from the contest. I really appreciated that you took the "experimental" theme to heart and incorporated it not only into the plot of your film but into the way you created it.
The cinematography is interesting throughout, and while you obviously didn't explain every aspect of the characters and setting, I felt like the overall story arc was clearly discernible with careful viewing. You didn't just throw together a jumble of abstract shots with no meaning behind them, and that holds the film together allowing the rest of the unorthodox presentation elements to work without being completely overwhelming.
My standout shots were probably the transition from minifigure hand to brick-built hand, and the final shot. Overall this film completely blew me out of the water, and you absolutely deserved the high rank your received in the contest. I hope to see more films with this level of visual polish from you in the future.
Thanks, Squash! That means a lot. I feel like I can't really be that objective about this video because I, of course, know what I intended the story to be, so I don't really know if it actually translates for people who, unlike me, didn't come up with the story. I'm glad that at least some people seem to have enjoyed it the way I was hoping they would. Maybe in like forty years, if I've forgotten all about it, I'll be able to watch this and decide if it works for me, haha. I dunno; I think I'd definitely have done some stuff differently if I had had more time to plan it out - and then hopefully certain things would've been more clear - but I probably wish that about every movie I've made, so... yeah.
Again, thanks everyone for your feedback!
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