There's not much to it - and what's there is less than spectacular.  I think the user ratings on the video speak for themselves.

If somebody is entertained by it because it's part of an old inside joke, so be it.  But it's not something that's likely to leave a good impression on most viewers.

Hmm, I find that Rottentomatoes is a good indication the majority of the time.  YouTube obviously not, there are plenty of bad videos there with 5 stars.  Rarely the opposite, however.  That many people here don't like you doesn't make your film any better; Rich is a fairly likable guy and his work certainly wasn't rated highly in the directory.

Precisely! When I said "there's not much to it" I didn't just mean in terms of length.  It opens with a cheesy title, followed by an audible mouse click before the opening line, which is then followed by a single person saying "yeah" as all three characters appear to be saying it.  This shows that the film was put together in a sloppy manner, the attention to detail throughout is very low.  The animation is fairly minimal (rather than fulling animating the ladder-climbing, you took only a few pictures and used some kind of fading effect to smooth it out), and there's not much effort at telling a story - "snipe the communists" is the most we get.  (Granted, a film this short need not have a deep story, but this film lacks quality execution to compensate for that.)  The sets are sparse, clearly lit by a lamp at close range, and we see well off the set in the last shot.  At the end we get credits that are difficult to read because it's too dark and blends in to the background.  To top it off, the music has no clear connection to the video's subject matter.  (I'm sure it's also offensive to some, if that is the case it is quite alright for them to rate accordingly.)

Honestly, there's really nothing I can find in "Carnage" that is particularly well done, other than the marching animation at 0:08, which is certainly of at least average quality.  It's pretty obvious that either you didn't put much time and effort into this, or were simply incompetent, and I don't think it was the latter.

Concerning your 'Maladroit' example, it's admittedly borderline as the standards go, but it was one of that reviewer's early reviews and the standards had not been as established as they have now.  As for the film itself, it has nice title effects, and the masking is fairly well done, it's certainly more polished than "Carnage."

-Sméagol, who didn't particularly enjoy either film, but preferred "Maladroit"

I knew this was coming...

No offense to whoever made maladroit. I am only complaining about directory standards.

Smeagol, look at the rotten tomatoes community ratings compared to the critic ratings.

Cheesy title complaints? Are you kidding me? This is a brickfilm. I understand that you like to make serious movies, but not very many "outsiders" take brickfilms seriously. Most brickfilms have cheesy plots.

Maladroit is 13 seconds long. 3 of which actually contain "animation". Less than 25% of the movie is animation. The "animation" is of a lego figure doing a backflip. So one can reasonably assume that there are less than 15 frames of actual animation over 15 seconds. Most of the "animation" was obviously done in a video editing program because we all agree gravity prevents minifigs from levitating. Most of the "animation" is ROTATING AN IMAGE!

Credits? You are basing admissions based on credits? What is this world coming to. CREDITS? Are you seriously complaining that the credits show the set? Tons of hollywood movies break the fourth wall in credits.

Complains about the ladder scene? Minifigs are not meant to climb those "ladders". Thats many people favorite part.

As for being able to see off the set in the last shot... Ok fine, but it is very questionable that someones enjoyment from a movie would be ruined by seeing a small crack for 2 seconds..

Its ok if you don't like my movie, I don't care, but I can't believe you think my movie has worse technical qualities than a movie that is 50% rotating an image.

As for bad lighting, how many vietnam movies do you know of that happen in broad daylight?

Whatever, man, this was the first time I ever brickfilmed. I don't care that you didn't enjoy it. I only care that you have suspect reasoning in the rejection.

Last edited by brian (June 22, 2009 (02:14pm))

I'm not getting into this discussion, but from my observation of Maladoit it appears to me the spin was done by masking, not just spinning a still frame.

Well Smegol, it's your site. I happen to think your system is terrible and inconsistent.

I'm not being facetious here, brianfast, I'm genuinely interested... what would you do differently?

That was one film and it was reviewed by a new reviewer at the time.  Multiple people here have explained that your assertion that it was just a rotated image isn't accurate, it's really not difficult to see this if you watch the video, but either way, "Maladroit" isn't the gold standard of what it takes to have your film recommended.  Any reviewing of an art form like filmmaking is going to have some variation because it's heavily subjective.  We're human and I don't maintain any pretense that we'll always be 100% consistent, but I think for the most part there is a noticeable difference between films that are recommended and those that aren't.

There are pretty extensive guidelines for content ratings, staff ratings, and style for writing reviews, but I did want to move away from the pure emphasis on production values that Brickfilms tended toward at the point where it had become fairly strict.  The most important criterion for a film to be recommended is that it be entertaining and watchable, if a particular reviewer doesn't like a well-made film due to personal taste he can post it in a thread in the reviewer's forum for somebody else to double-check.  With a few exceptions, we generally try to reserve recommendation for films we think most viewers would enjoy - a quick look at the user ratings on films we have recommended vs. films we haven't shows that our accuracy rate in that regard is good.