This may be easy as an animation exercise, but believe me, to make animated characters who are standing around talking, and making the dialogue engaging enough to hold your attention, is EXTREMELY difficult! Animation is not just the visuals; it's a gestalt of all the elements working together.

I lot of comedy in brickfilms are just 1 minute stories with a twist.  Like a nerd beats a jock at a wresting match.

I totally agree with this. I love well written dialog (watch any of the Henri and Edmond films), but overall I feel there's just too much talking. This goes for comedies as well as dramas. As far as visually engaging elements, I think using Pokéballin 2 as an example was spot on. The dialog is hardly memorable, but some lines stick out because of the animation ("What's the matter, Ash? Can't take the heat?"). The film works because of the visuals, which seems to be NXT's thing. I'd love to hear his input here.

Anyway, I'm trying to correct this in my own work. What I'm attempting with my current project is to tell as much of the story as I can through visuals. There is one crucial point in the film where I plan on using dialog, and that will be it. Everywhere else I'll be experimenting with cinematography or animation to tell the story. It's not a comedy, though I imagine the animation will have that certain liveliness to it that I like.

This is also an excellent point, and I think it's because people simply don't educate themselves about film. I wouldn't claim to be an expert on cinematography, but I feel more aware of where the camera is and what it may be trying to accomplish by being there after watching a few of Tony Zhao's essays. Bob's meeting with his boss in The Incredibles suddenly got a lot more interesting when I realized that the camera was reflecting Bob's complete disinterest in anything his boss was saying. But I digress.

I hope everyone else reading this topic tries to get something out of it and apply it. I love topics like these, but I don't feel like they do anything in the long run because the majority of the people who read them read it, say something along the lines of "that was very nice!" and return to their status quo.

P.S.

I'd suggest researching comedy, then. Figure out what you think is funny. Why do you think something is funny? What do other people think is funny? What makes something funny? Figure that out, and start applying it. Write some jokes and try them on people. Practice. Do research. Don't give up.

Last edited by Littlebrick (April 27, 2015 (10:14am))

That gif.

Anyway, it's interesting you've brought this up, because it's a big critique of my own work I've had going back and watching a lot of it recently. I've been putting off my next actual film, because it's mainly just a dialogue between two characters, and I've been trying to make my dialogue animation more interesting before I tackle it. LEGO as a medium is so ideal for comedy, but the visual benefits for comedy animation that the LEGO minifigure provides are rarely taken advantage of; which is why I've been looking at my old work and thinking "ugh, this is boring". I'd love to see more slapstick in brickfilms. All the comedy movies I laugh the hardest at are from the 80's and earlier. I think the hardest I've ever laughed at a movie was watching one of the original Pink Panther films from the 60's. I think comedy in film, both in the mainstream and in brickfilming, could really benefit from a shift back to a more classic style.

(I'm getting some good film ideas just from writing this.)

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I definitely agree that it would be great to see more visual comedy and better cinematography in Brickfilming.  LEGO lends itself especially well to this sort of style, but it's still pretty rare to see it in actual Brickfilms and I'd love to see more Brickfilmers explore these possibilities.

That being said, I don't think your comparison of modern Hollywood comedies with the average Brickfilm is entirely fair.  The comedies Tony Zhou discusses are professional big-budget films, made by people who have spent years of their life studying film and working in the film-making industry.  Brickfilms are typically made by kids or teens who are still in school, unlikely to have seriously studied film (yet), and who view film-making as a casual fun side hobby.  Heck, my own interest in cinema in general was sparked by seeing Brickfilms and wanting to make some myself.  (Funnily enough it's now my experience in live-action and interest in cinema influencing my Brickfilming, so I guess I've come a full circle.)  Basically, the modern Hollywood comedies are made by people who should know better, but the Brickfilms are made by people who don't yet have the skill or knowledge to do better.

Honestly, I think the main problem is a lack of awareness.  As a film-maker, you have full control over the world you create.  You can make your characters and story do whatever you want.  This is particularly true of Brickfilming, as typically you will be the writer, director, cameraman and animator, editor, set/prop designer, gaffer,  cinematographer, possibly voice actor, caterer... etc. (unlike live-action, where you essentially need an army of people to get anything done).  As Tony puts it:

It sounds like an incredibly simple thing (and it is), but I only really grasped that after watching Every Frame a Painting and working in live-action.  Even having a basic grasp of cinematography and shot types, and simply asking yourself why you want to frame a specific shot in a specific way will greatly improve the quality of your film.  Before I didn't even storyboard or write out proper scripts; now, I rigorously plan out every shot.

Of course, I now feel slightly bad since my current project has a ton of dialogue, and at times mainly consists of characters talking at each other.  However, I do plan on adding a good amount of visual humour (particularly in an epic fight scene I have planned), and I've taken great pains to keep the cinematography visually engaging, instead of being a standard shot/reverse-shot setup.

So to sum it all up, I think the best way to go about improving Brickfilm comedies is to encourage them to study and analyse film-making, think outside the box, and make them aware of the possibilities.  It's far too easy to get trapped in a "do what everyone else does" mindset, and films suffer for it.

Frankly, I disagree. Breaking up shots with lots of dialogue doesn't make the film any better, it often just makes it choppy. You have to plan out your shots in advance, and choose the best possible camera angles for the dialogue. Just switching back and forth and out and in doesn't make it interesting, it just makes it tiring to look at.

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Comedy that is mostly dialogue-based is not always so easy to animate.  Characters walk around, carry and use props, react to each other, especially if three or more characters are involved.  I'm going to watch the film, finally, posted at the top.

But also, minimal humor is trendy today, but really big in the 1990s.

I feel like people think I am vilifying dialog, I am not, HOO, please watch the video before continuing the discussion, I am saying that films lack visual comedy, you can add visual comedy to a dialog heavy film, even though Squid was getting down on his own film Leprechauns in France it still uses funny visuals to agment the verbal comedy, like literally showing bald dude's mind getting blown:

or things entering the frame in funny ways:

These are funny visual elements that use the film medium to enhance the humor in the dialog and help keep the audience engaged. If visual elements are few and far between the eyes of the audience will start to wander and if you have a visual joke they might miss it because they are reading there facebook feed or something while your film is playing on the side, if they haven't given up on watching completely.

Another great example of visual comedy used to enhance dialog in a dialog heavy films would be PushOverProductions, you have things like the sales man in 15 Second Party in a Crate appearing in a very funny manner, the whole film is packed with a TON of visual gags and even though it's only a 30 second short the combination of funny dialog with humorous visuals make it very memorable.

This is the kinds of things brick films need more of, the way you animate dialog can be funny, however more often then not it gets turned into mechanical motions. LEGO is a very visual medium and with the magic of stop motion there is no reason we need to be confined the the constrains of reality. Right and left aren't the only place you can bring a new character in from, you can have minifigs pop out of the floor or ceiling, heads arms and legs can pop off, you could tack mixal eyes to a minifig when they get freaked out, there are a lot of LEGO pieces get creative!

I've tried to keep my tone pretty positive and only highlight examples of things done right by members but you are sort of painting a target on yourself HOO.

Mr Vertigo, while comparing brickfilms to big budget productions might not be 'fair' it's certainly valid, this is a thread for folks that want to improve there craft, if folks want to wallow in mediocrity there is no need for those folks to get down on the people who are willing to research and try new things and reach for higher goals. There is no reason why someone can't make a brickfilm as timeless as a Chuck Jones Loony Toon episode, but if we aren't willing to look at our own problems and shortcomings then there is no way we will ever get there.

Sloth, I did admit that I didn't see the video, because of lack of time at the time. I watched it last night, and I understand what you mean completely.

I do have a few comments on it.  The video presented some pretty good suggestions, even if under half of the provided examples were actually funny.  I would go in a little different direction, though.  I know everyone loves lists, so the video categorizes types of humorous camera work.  But his ending is really the crux of the video and the best advice: the camera is the "playground", and you should try to be inventive and novel with it.  What's more, this is not only a good rule for only comedy, but dramatic or tragic films, and prose as well.  To apply the technique in prose, you want to describe the mundane in a way it's never been explained before.  When a house catches on fire, for instance, how many times has the smoke rising been given the metaphor, "a plume"?  You can do better than that!  Or can you?  An inventive writer should learn to use language the way the director uses the lens.

The TV montage is a great joke and effective comedy most every time it's used (also one that has been used a lot over time, which is weird becaue the overused is kinda what the video is saying to avoid), but in the example shown, while funny, it's not someone missing an actual warning, because it's just a combination of related clips that create a related sentence through serendipity.  I would just as likely not say, "Oh, there's some impending doom", because of such a coincidence.

Also, two of the 8 "ideas": matching scene transitions and super dramatic cues are already extremely common in modern comedy.   This should make the creator of this video happy.  (actually super-dramatic cues are something I'd like to see LESS of.)  There's also the much funnier super-understated cue, where a character reacts mildly to something ultra-dramatic.  This can be very effective, but it was left out of the video as a "type".  Maybe the director he likes doesn't do them.

Well, that's my 2 cents worth.  That's probably what my advice is worth.

Comedy is comedy, as long as it makes people laugh, to me it's good. I don't personally care whether it is visual or just talking. However, I am not very fond of slapstick comedy, like we see in a lot of TV today. Go back in time thirty years or so and it's much funnier. But I do think slapstick can be done right when you got the right person coming up with it. Which is definitely not me.