Topic: What are we missing?
I feel like rambling/ranting, so this post may seem a little poorly thought out.
I feel like we are missing something in our brickfilms. Lately, the craze has been all about awesome animation, fight scenes, CGI, expansive sets, or getting things more realistic — I'm probably missing a few other things. Let's look at an example, though. How about Keshen's Captain Obvious video? Half the comments are about animation, some random technical quality, or how "awesome" the film was. Now let's look at 0ldScratch's Out of Time. Again, most of the comments are about animation or some technical quality. The word "story" is thrown around, but despite being one of the stronger aspects of the film, it doesn't get much elaboration. I'm sure that you can find similar comments in pretty much every other film thread on this forum.
I'm afraid that most of us seem to be putting too much focus on the quality of our sets and animation, and not enough focus on story and characterization (and timing, if the film is a comedy). How about those dynamic duo films? Back in the day, we had Mike and Geoff, Steve and Dave, Mr. Tater and Kevin, and so on. Yes it was cliché, but they still worked; you've got two conflicting characters (crazy/mischievous guy with semi-serious/serious guy) who "hang out," and then you throw in some crazy scenario, and it can work. I'd like to point out another duo specifically: Ralph and Rupert. Same formula, but anyone who remembers them might argue that the quality of the films wasn't so great compared to the other three duos that I have mentioned (at first, anyway), yet they were still hilarious films — great example of story over technical quality.
In recent years, the dynamic duo formula has been degraded to two similar characters cracking jokes about pop culture and other geeky stuff, without any really interesting conflict at all (hint: there is conflict in EVERY good story, though it's not necessarily the thing that makes them great). Nobody really liked dynamic duos anymore, so they died out. Except for Henri and Edmond. There was the simple formula, in all it's glory, and it worked again.
I hope you got something out of that "dynamic duo" rant. I picked the dynamic duo thing because it's something everyone should be familiar with. Anyway, I guess I could sum it out with this: Story trumps quality, clichés aren't bad, and all stories have conflict.
Have I lost anyone yet?
So, all that said, I think that if you really want to make good films, it would be worth it to spend as much time working on your story as you do fussing over lighting, set design and animation. Combined. And I think one we could do that is by getting/giving input on stories before filming them; make sure it works on paper before you try to make it work in film.
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