I tried a few new ideas with this movie.
There were two scenes that involved a dolly track for the camera. The arrival of the hand car at the red station had a 2nd train track (running not quite parallel to the train line) with the camera on a purpose built carriage. This gave a nice smooth motion and the camera actually moves away from the station as well.
There was some photoshop (PS) work involved. The coin toss and the fig falling off the bridge, car brake lights and the nodding fig. I wanted to make head movements more than just rotating left and right but I didn’t want to modify a torso by cutting off the pin. So I built a stand the same height as a mini-fig and used Blu-Tac to fix the head to the top I then recorded the head positions and PS it onto the background scene (which had the body and the petrol station)
The bikini model is 100% lego. She has two aerial bases (Hinge Control Stick Base
) held in position by a technics rubber band. After the frames were recorded she looked like a dominatrix so I PS in some extra material for her bikini top.
There were still plenty of mistakes.
Rule #1, never use the digital zoom on the web camera. The compression artifacts become very obvious. I had to smooth out some 50 frames in PS.
The bridge scene had to be edited because our cat, who had been asleep, decided to jump up onto the set knocking both the camera and the bridge. I couldn’t re-align them without a noticeable jump and I didn’t want to re-record all the frames already done. Rule #2, lock the cat in the laundry while filming.