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Forums - Bricks in Motion » General Film Discussion » Should there be more Romance in today's Brickfilms?
It'd be like the Alien of brickfilming.
Romance? Pfffffft. I wanna see hard *******.
I would like to see more romantic brickfilms. "It Happened on Brick Avenue" is a really awesome one, with tons of dollars worth of modular sets in it!
Plastic Love, anyone? The problem here is getting more female voice actresses. As I understand it, there's maybe 3-4 active female brickfilmers, who already make up 90% of the female characters in brickfilms. This should easily be solved by simply going out and asking girls IRL if they'd like to do some voice acting.
Then you can worry about writing female characters that are convincing, and subsequently writing convincing romance, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Or you can scrap all that and do the silent approach.
This should easily be solved by simply going out and asking girls IRL if they'd like to do some voice acting.
A lot of people here are too awkward to talk to girls.
Or you can scrap all that and do the silent approach.
Walter Benson's Love in Black and White. I would say this qualifies as a "romance". It's definitely one of my favorite brickfilms.
It's 2014 and I still haven't made a romance brickfilm, but it's still a thing I really want to do.
In We The Pumpkins Three, however, I did manage to animate a kiss in one of the little vinjets, and I thought that turned out rather well.
Of course, that was all just a small scene disconnected from the rest of the film, thus it really wasn't a romance film at all.
Making a romance film still remains one of the most important things on the lists of sorts of films I want to make, however. In fact, it's the only thing really left on that list since I've finally made a poetic brickfilm.
I've made plenty of brickfilms with female voices before, so that wouldn't be too much of a problem, though, I've been considering making a film and just having it be voices by only men just for the sake of comedy. I really liked how my fake female voice turned out in Odoriferous, also, my brother Wilson can pull off the most spot on old southern woman voice you've ever heard.
I've also been considering having a romance in the Johnnybob cop film I'm planning to write since there are already a bunch of female characters in it as well, but I'm not sure if it's really needed, so the entire film might work better without it.
Of course, I have no actual life experience upon the subject, as I've never been in any sort of romantic relationship, thus I'm not entirely confident in my ability to write it.
Of course, I also have never been to France, met a shark, seen a squid, or been to space, but it's never stopped me from writing about that sort of stuff.
What is love?
I completely forgot about my "romantic" brickfilm.
Christmas Puppy Love is the love story of two LEGO dogs. No minifigures in the entire film. Unfortunately, some of the romantic settings didn't come through as well as I wanted them to. Like the window acting as a fire place, snuggled-up reading a book, and the attempted kiss in front of the door.
I hope to produce another romance some day, maybe with un-dead zombies or mythical monsters. I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable making a romance about minifigures acting like humans. And if I don't feel comfortable about it, how will the audience feel? That's why I said monsters, because you can't take them seriously anyway, so you can relax while watching the love story of mythical creatures.
The problem here is getting more female voice actresses. As I understand it, there's maybe 3-4 active female brickfilmers, who already make up 90% of the female characters in brickfilms. This should easily be solved by simply going out and asking girls IRL if they'd like to do some voice acting.
I can confirm that this is a winning strategy for getting girls to act in your films.
A lot of people here are too awkward to talk to girls.
Time to level up, folks. It's much easier to ask a girl who likes acting to do voice acting for your movie than it is to ask a girl you like on a date, and they need not be treated with similar degrees of terror. You won't get cooties.
rioforce wrote:A lot of people here are too awkward to talk to girls.
Time to level up, folks. It's much easier to ask a girl who likes acting to do voice acting for your movie than it is to ask a girl you like on a date, and they need not be treated with similar degrees of terror. You won't get cooties.
This made me chuckle
I actually have a lot of female friends who ask to voice for me, and my mum's a voice over artist, so I've never really had a problem in this respect. The only reason I haven't attempted romance in a brickfilm (yet) is because animating two minifigures kissing...it's difficult to make it look convincing, or it has for me.
By the way, since we are talking about the availability of voice actresses, who are the 4 on BiM? I know of two active ones: The incredible Brick7 and the very talented AC Films. I also loved the voices for the two girls in what I am declaring the brick film of 2014: That's the Way It Goes. Are they open to voicing other films? I'd like to ask them to be charactrers in my series.
RioForce, what's the problem with a romance between minifigures? When I was 8 and I got my first set with minifigures (Town House, 1979), I pretended "Mary" and "Bill" were a married couple. I don't know why Minifigures can't fall in love. What are your thoughts?
Violence for the sake of violence!!! That pretty much describes the majority of brickfilms. Yes that has it's place, but it seems like every other brickfilm I see is a blood bath. I love action as much as the next guy, but I would rather have a story to go with it to give me a reason to care for the action and the people involved. So more romance and everyday life would be a harm welcome to me. I think Walter Benson's The Way it Goes did an excellent job of telling a good, every day life story that spanned 19 minutes. I think we need more of that.
RioForce, what's the problem with a romance between minifigures? When I was 8 and I got my first set with minifigures (Town House, 1979), I pretended "Mary" and "Bill" were a married couple. I don't know why Minifigures can't fall in love. What are your thoughts?
I'm not opposed to romance between minifigures at all. I'm sure we al did the "Mary and Bill" situation in our play-time, but it's making a film about minifigures falling in love... Maybe it's just me, but I find it hard to take a minifigure seriously in any film. So if a couple of minifigures were on a romantic date, I would expect someone's hand to fall off in the soup or a clown to be sitting at the other table. Making the audience feel comfortable while watching the film is difficult. It would just feel really awkward to me to watch a romance with minifigures.
I'm sure we al did the "Mary and Bill" situation in our play-time
...or in my case the "Hewkii and Macku" situation
...or in my case the "Hewkii and Macku" situation
That comes up way too much on Bionicle forums.
I never actually did that with my minifigs. Probably because my first 15 sets were Mars Mission. (Which lacked female minifigs.)
The reason the first 2 minifigures I got were named Mary & Bill was because those were the names of the two main minifigures in the Lego Idea Book from the late 1970s ("set" #6000) Here's the cover:
Mary is the one with the red dots on her torso & Bill has the blue stripes.
Coincidentally, I put my version of Mary & Bill in the background in the shot I animated today.
There was some pretty good romance in my favorite Brickfilm of the year, "That's the way it goes", between two sets of couples. It was well done, funny, and slapstick. There will be a romance in a future episode of my own series. I think it's a nice category that has a lot of potential to be explored in Lego.
I'm not opposed to romance between minifigures at all. I'm sure we al did the "Mary and Bill" situation in our play-time, but it's making a film about minifigures falling in love... Maybe it's just me, but I find it hard to take a minifigure seriously in any film. So if a couple of minifigures were on a romantic date, I would expect someone's hand to fall off in the soup or a clown to be sitting at the other table. Making the audience feel comfortable while watching the film is difficult. It would just feel really awkward to me to watch a romance with minifigures.
It doesn't necessarily has to be taken seriously. It just has to be romantic for the characters: if there's good chemistry between the two, then it can be the most ridiculous situation one might imagine, but you buy it (just look at Woody Allen's movies "Annie's Hall" or "Manhattan": one simply cannot take his character seriously, yet he created some of the most romantic scenes ever).
Even "someone's hand falling off in the soup" might be just the touch it needs to make it work: when dating someone, awkward and embarassing situations happen all the time, but whatever happens, it just feels good to them, they're happy to be with each other.
Don't worry about making the audience feel comfortable, think about the minifigures falling in love.
One of my favourite romance stories ever is about a faceless pumpkin who falls in love with a creature that is a green mass of tentacles.
Pumkin and Squib from Baman and Piderman, if anyone's wondering
It doesn't really have to be about real human looking characters for people to really like it.
rioforce wrote:I'm not opposed to romance between minifigures at all. I'm sure we al did the "Mary and Bill" situation in our play-time, but it's making a film about minifigures falling in love... Maybe it's just me, but I find it hard to take a minifigure seriously in any film. So if a couple of minifigures were on a romantic date, I would expect someone's hand to fall off in the soup or a clown to be sitting at the other table. Making the audience feel comfortable while watching the film is difficult. It would just feel really awkward to me to watch a romance with minifigures.
It doesn't necessarily has to be taken seriously. It just has to be romantic for the characters: if there's good chemistry between the two, then it can be the most ridiculous situation one might imagine, but you buy it (just look at Woody Allen's movies "Annie's Hall" or "Manhattan": one simply cannot take his character seriously, yet he created some of the most romantic scenes ever).
Even "someone's hand falling off in the soup" might be just the touch it needs to make it work: when dating someone, awkward and embarassing situations happen all the time, but whatever happens, it just feels good to them, they're happy to be with each other.
Don't worry about making the audience feel comfortable, think about the minifigures falling in love.
That is very well said, and inspirational. I guess I was thinking "romance" as in a more serious setting, but a romantic comedy is a completely different ball park.
By the way, since we are talking about the availability of voice actresses, who are the 4 on BiM?
Active Female Brickfilmers/members
-AC Films
-Brick7
-Dewfilms
-mama monkey, from thefourmonkeys
Inactive Female Brickfilmers/members
-Becksterqueen (Timboh's sister)
-Blue
-EmmaExecute
-Euphreana
-J.TProductions
-Sparks Flying
-Trillspots
-witchbaby
-Xanadugirl6
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