For me, just the fact that brickfilming has become more of a popularity builder and money maker (youtube partnerships is what i mean), it's lost a lot of it's snazziness it once had.

But that's just my take on it, I still like brickfilming, but it feels like it's lost a lot of it's luster because of the whole youtube making money stuff. I mean, most people's goals in brickfilming is to get a youtube partnership. Not that that's a bad thing.

Some awesome brickfilms have been the result of licensed sets. Fancypants' The Force Unleashed, KG's A LEGO Batman Film to name a few. 'Lego guys rob a bank 2' is just as awful as 'lego star wars attack of evil yoda'.

Hahahahaha. How is there a correlation between a film being licensed and it being of lower quality?

I get what he's saying. People make videos about licensed themes because they see someone else being unoriginal and want to copy them. Like if I made a film with my own unique, original characters, a person couldn't use those same characters without directly copying me. But if I made a film about, say, Star Wars characters, then I'm using those characters and thus they're copying my copying, as opposed to them being the first ones copying. Thus people are making films that are unoriginal, and lack in the quality of their story. Also it makes the brickfilms less of a thought-out thing, because they can make films in ten minutes that have two stormtroopers and feel like they've made a masterpiece. However when they had no choice but to think of their own characters and storylines and whatnot, they worked harder on their films and had to be more original and creative. Also you will find that overall, it's much more exciting to make a film that is completely your idea than a film based on someone else's ideas, therefore you work harder on it because you're more motivated.
I'm going to make a statement that will probably be bashed by the majority of people, but I think that for the most part, licensed themes have taken a lot of the effort and creativity out of brickfilming, as well as LEGOs as a whole. Even brickfilms about Indiana Jones before the sets came out were better than the majority of Indiana Jones films these days because the person had to find a good looking torso, make a good looking set, had to use their imagination to think of what to do to make it seem like an Indiana Jones film; however now a kid just has to go to Target, buy a small set, and take pictures of it. Almost no creativity in doing that. So to answer the question of the thread, I feel like the creativity involved in brickfilming has gone downhill, and therefore so has brickfilming as a whole.

I'm saying that a person who doesn't know how to brickfilm can go buy a set and take a few pictures and think that it's a good brickfilm. I know very well how much goes into brickfilming, believe you me. I'm not saying that people that make good licensed videos are bad. I'm saying that a brickfilmer without a BiM account who doesn't know what they're doing has the ability to spend almost no time or effort on a "brickfilm" (I use the term only in the technical sense here, I'm not saying that the film would be considered a brickfilm to brickfilmers). The ability. Not bashing people who make licensed brickfilms, only saying that it tunes down the necessity of creativity and allows for more low-quality brickfilms simply because people don't need to spend as much time and effort on them.

You misunderstand my meaning. I'm saying that the quality of the average brickfilm has gone down due to licensed sets because there are more people that don't know what they're doing for the most part making brickfilms. And I'm not saying that anyone should wallow in self-pity, but improvement and growth is a big part of life as a whole, and personally I think that it's more fun to see the improvement of one's films than to think that a film I make is the best thing ever.

There are less good films, there are more bad films, so yes, I do think brickfilming is going downhill. I've got several theories about why this is, but if I were to pick one, I'd say that most people just don't care about it.

Think about it. A lot of the very well known brickfilmers these days are a) pursuing some film-related career/major, or b) are already working in film. There are a few exceptions, like Buxton (0ldScratch), who writes financial software for a living, which is hardly film related. However, I do remember that Buxton had a whole load of animation tests done before he worked on Out of Time, his first brickfilm, and although his profession isn't film related, I can't say that he doesn't have an interest in film. On the other hand, we've got Jay Silver (The Gauntlet, Rapunzel) who is currently an animation director on an educational show, I believe. Then we've got the more recent generation of "greats," including Night Owl, who has an immense interest in cinematography; Smeagol, who is studying film; KG, who I'm certain is studying animation, and so on.

Then we've got everyone else, who may or may not have picked up a book or two on animation or filmmaking, but probably learned everything they know about animation from this site, which is probably one of the least intelligent things to do if you've got a real interest in some aspect of film. We're almost all amateurs here; don't expect to learn much here. I know I've only visited one other online animation forum, and only read one book on animation, but that book was written by Richard Williams, animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and a respectable number of the active members on that animation forum are actually working in the field. In the 12-18 months I've visited that site and read that book, I feel as if I've learned so much more about animation than I have since I joined Brickfilms.com back in 2005, because I'm learning from people who are at a level much higher than my own.

Perhaps I've wandered off my main point a little bit. Perhaps I've stuck my foot in my mouth. However, I do feel that many of the people making brickfilms now just aren't willing to do the work necessary to make a good brickfilm, and that is why brickfilming has gone downhill.

You are right. It's a vicious circle. A bunch of kiddos watch for example xxxfancypantsxxx's The Force Unleashed and then they think "I have Star Wars sets too I'm gonna give it a go" that's how hundreds of low quality brickfilms are made. However, it's not their fault that they make such videos, I mean the idea of brickfilms in the first place is that pretty much anyone with a camera and some Lego minifigs can make a film. That is how pretty much all of us started brickfilming anyways, you see some cool video made with legos and you give it a shot, some people realize that it's too hard for them and they stop brickfilming while the others continue on and they become better and better. Sure licensed themes cause a lack of originality in most of the brickfilms but what are you going to do about it? With the Superhero sets coming out get ready for hundreds of low quality superhero brickfilms and don't forget LOTR too...

Well, I think that Brickfilming hasn't really produced many great films recently like when it did back in the mid-late 2000s. Grace and America: Outlawed, to name a few produced back then, and Heri and Edmond: Copyright, to name a great film that was produced recently. I do think it is both a mixture of Great Brickfilmers of the past just moving on, like Nathan Wells (I think he has decided to stop), and people just being busy. I'm not saying it's wrong for others to move on, but I just think it is one of the reasons for the decline. I am interested in brickfilms, I plan to make a cartoon series. However, I just don't have the time right now due to school. And I'm sure others are facing the same situations, either with work or school.
It's not the end yet, though. Just my 2 cents.