I do agree that it'd be interesting if the project was a narrative film, as opposed to what Brickfilming Is Just Awesome was about. If we are going to go with a fictional film though, it is going to take a lot of planning in order for everyone to love the plot and the screenplay.

The thing that worked with BIJA was the fact that Hazzat was in charge, and he is definitely a very reliable person that everyone could count on, so there was never any confusion or really any chance of the project falling into the abyss.

I personally think that it'd be great to have the film revolve around a fun and original idea; not just plot-wise, but generally storytelling-wise. Something that would really be worth the time and that would actually incorporate the idea of a community project in the storytelling, and not something that, once it was finished, you could say that it would only take one person to create the film.

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12 joys of brickfilms will happen, I will finish editing it.

Last edited by Rockydude411 (January 16, 2015 (06:40pm))

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Penta covered all of the basics, so I'll add:

I don't see anything wrong with trying to share a universal character. There are plenty of minifigure parts that overlap, and I think it would make it a lot more interesting if the community was able to come together to animate one or two united main characters instead of another collection of separate characters.

With decent coordination, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a character design that many people either can replicate now, or spend a few bucks to replicate.

As for a story, I think something that is less dialog-heavy and focuses on telling a story through visuals would be more interesting and creatively challenging. Dialog-heavy brickfilms can be great, but sometimes can turn into a bunch of talking heads.\

I think a brickfilm made in the style of The Letter would be very appealing. A single character moving from place to place would allow different people to animate different parts, but still be tied together with a shared character. This character could go about doing different things to achieve a goal.

I absolutely think we should avoid a "montage film" because that's already been done twice, and isn't that creatively interesting (and this is coming from someone who organized one of those "montage films." We should be able to unite around a single unified story, and accept that this story could only be written by one or two people. Participants in community projects need to understand that it isn't a democracy: no one gets an equal say. Every needs to understand their role and be happy with that.

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Thanks for the input, Nathan! You're right about the sharing character thing. I guess that if the character was simple enough, it could be used in all of the clips. Your unified story idea sounds great too. The story ideas I wrote used mostly separate clips (I guess it's kind of like a montage), because that's fairly easy for everyone to do, and because that's the way most of the other community project have been done.

As for a film that relies on animation more than dialogue, I would like that very much. I just watched The Letter, and that is a perfect example of a film that does not rely on dialogue to tell a great story.

I've got a few more story ideas in my head, I'm not going to write them here right now, I'm going to type them in a document first, but if anyone else has any story ideas, please post them!

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Sorry Rio but me and a hundred other people already did this one.

I like what Nathan was getting at with the dialogue-free shared character film, even though it does bring to mind the failed 2008 community project Late for Work, which was undone by some people never coming through with their clip. You would want to make sure you can trust the team and have a means of contacting each person, even if just to learn whether they have dropped out or not. Some people who were supposed to contribute to Late for Work just disappeared without a trace and people asking them questions in forum threads never got replies.

I had no idea. And I thought mine was an original idea...

Yes, I would probably have to make a Skype group or use emails to communicate with the participants more. Using a forum topic is no efficient, because we may ask someone something through it, but it they never see it, and it gets drowned out by other replies, it's useless.

If by soon, you mean in the next two months, then no, of course it won't be. We probably won't be done with pre-production by that time (though, I'd like to get through pre-production as quickly as possible). We would "schedule" or for fall or winter to give plenty of time to animators. People have other projects to work on, and work and life, and there are BiM contests coming up, so we need to give time for the animators to do their best work instead of slopping together up in a day. (To be honest, it looks like "Brickfilming is So Awesome" could have been done in one day if everyone treated it like a THAC and animated all at the same time).

I don't like the contest thing, though. This project should be done because everyone wants to make a film together, and because it will be fun. I don't want to bribe people.

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We need to make the film in such a way that if someone's part was not done, someone else could take it over, or it could be removed from the script. That could be hard to do, but if one person doesn't follow through, we don't want this project to crumble.

Last edited by rioforce (January 17, 2015 (03:35pm))

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Hey guys, I thought of a story for the project, and I thought you might want to hear it. It is written as a story, not as a montage, because it isn't a montage. I was inspired by the way Cleaning Time was made. It looks like one story, but it was made by many people.

All comments, questions, critiques, and criticism is welcome. Also, if you have a story idea, please post it. If this community project is going to work, we need the community.

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I like it. I really like referencing, but this is a little to much for a reference (we're actually involving a time machine, not referencing to one, or a project). In the first post we should start including links to everyone's ideas for people to review and decide on and stuff. Great work Rio.

EDIT: What if we did something along the lines of a Michael Hickox styled stop-motion? I know that is vague, but so is the style of some of his films. I think we shouldn't start a community project with a full blown story, but start smaller and warm up to it just to see how things go. (As we all know, community projects take a long time to make, often because their stories need to be simplified.)

Last edited by Gentry Studios (January 20, 2015 (06:37am))

I like the idea of a police chase, or investigation, but I'm not sold on the time travel aspect. I'd rather have a story basically grounded in reality, even if it's exaggerated for comedic style (like The Letter). I vaguely recall a failed community project called Late for Work that was about a person who was, surprise surprise, late for work. I still think a film in that style would be the most fun and different from previous community projects.

I've been thinking about this for a bit and I feel this is important to say. You probably already know this Rio, but I think it needs to be said:

As the organizer of a community project, you need to be willing to say no. You need to be able to reject people, and be selective on who you want to be a part of the community project. When I organized The Day Brickfilms.com Crashed, I hand-picked everyone I wanted to be involved. I'm not saying you have be that strict, but you won't be able to include everyone who wants to participate, and some feelings might get hurt. But that happens. Hopefully everyone is able to understand that.

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