Hello.   

My wife and I have been Lego fans for 20 years.   I made my first brick film in 2003, which was a 2 minute long music video for a Moxy Fruvous song.   In 2004 I did a shot-for-shot remake of the first indiana jones movie.  (all 116 minutes!)  I have never shared those movies because I don't own the rights to the sound tracks.   In late 2004 my son was born and I was banned from making new movies.  However, my son is now 7, and when he heard about the lego superhero contest he asked at dinner: "Can we enter, Dad?"   I smiled at my wife and said "Of course, we can!"   

We wrote the script for this together in early August and he helped me build sets during the days and I have been filming about 2 - 4 hours a night every night after the kids are asleep.   I have about 300 hours of work in this film so far.   

I shot the footage on a sony dv camera and I did my initial editing in Imovie 2, but finished with final cut pro. 

The voice acting was done by students that attend the high school where I teach.   

I am about a third of the way through "part 2" of this movie-  I bought a new mic and Motion 5 to try to up the overall quality of my work.  I am hoping to finish part 2 before November 15th.

Please let me know what you think of my work!

Larry

I like that you are doing this as a family
your animation was a little slow you might want to try doing a higher Frame rate. (Fifteen Frames per Second is the standard around here)
As Alfa Animations aid some effects would be nice.
you can look here for some free software but merely using a flashlight to brighten the scene when a gun fires is usily good enough
keep going, I cant wait to see the next part.

Props and lightning and minifigs are good, but you should set the FPS higher. Nice video, and long. I like it. Really!

Jesse the Ninja - filming 50% - editing 20% - over all 35,0%

Yeah, that's very potential film.

Jesse the Ninja - filming 50% - editing 20% - over all 35,0%

Thanks for the feedback!

I am only 3 minutes into Part 2 of my movie.   I will try to increase my frame rate for the rest of what I film for this installment.   Pritchard- I'm glad you noticed all the details I added to the cave.   Building the penny and the card was really challenging.  I put a lot of time into my sets.  The 40 cm tall batman in the opening took me 6 hours to make, but it is only on film for about 7 seconds...

Hey bud good job on your first video. I can appreciate where you are coming from with your son. I have always liked Lego but it was my son who got me into it big time and I have not looked back since. Looking forward to seeing more of your work.;)

Ok here's my review on it......

Animation: 3/5
Lighting: 2/5
VFX: 3/5
Sound: 3 1/2
Film quality: 4
Story: 3

For your first video you did a very good job! you should probably consider using a higher framerate, reducing light flicker, and not bumping your camera when you film. In the opening part, when the bats fly by, I would've made a sky background or something instead of using the wall.

OVERALL:    4/10

I don't mean to be rude..... I'm just giving my review.

Thanks!

-Anteater

Well, he used the Batman theme in both, so maybe WMG didn't notice the first video but noticed the edited one.

Well, I decided just now to watch this, and I have to agree with JK. This wasn't bad at all.
Sure, the animation was choppy, but it has style. While watching it I didn't care how low the framerate was, I was actually fascinated by how some animation tricks worked so well (like the dressing part, or the pedals, or even the explosion). It worked really well. And the plot sounds like part of something bigger, it makes me curious, it looks well developed and way more complicated than the average batman brickfilm we usually find on youtube.
Sets were another impressive part of this movie, very realistic, and definitely gave the impression of being in a real lego world (even if some times I spotted the end of the set, didn't care about it).
I don't see why Anteater gave story a 3/10 rating, and lighting wasn't that bad either. I find the solution to your lighting problems interesting: it is impossible to make a real Batman sign on the sky, but you managed to make it look real, no matter how it was clearly printed in the blanket or whatever that thing was, it looked real enough to me.
The sound at times was not realistic, and I could hear you used only one sound track, which leads me to the question: do you use WMM? If so, I'd suggest changing editing software. You'll see having more tracks will help, you won't have to stop a sound effect to put in a dialogue. On another note, the voice acting was good and convincing.
Also, another aspect of the movie that helped the animation look good was the cinematography. It was excellent in some parts, and interesting. In some parts it felt like a real movie (although sound didn't help much in that). Well, I'm not going to say it's one of the best I've seen in brickfilms, but it's good enough to me to say that it's better than in most of the brickfilms I see nowdays.
And actually I think the animation here is way more fashinating than the usual "good 15 fps standard" animation. It's fashinating because even at a slower framerate it really works, to the point that I don't care how theorically bad or unrealistic it should be considered, kinda like Through the Hatch, which is one of my favourite brickfilms, that has choppy-looking animation (it's great choppy-looking animation).
I'll probably the only one here to say that the animation here is absolutely perfect and flawless, as in the previously mentioned film, because I refuse to think the animation is choppy/too slow.
But well, that's just my opinion. I can't wait to see the second part.
Congratulation on making this, you definitely deserve to win something for that contest. 4/5