I guess I should have specified. I'm looking for an effect like The Magic Portal, LEGO Sports Champions, or Liftoff, except that I dislike the 4:3 aspect ratio (though I do see that Liftoff has a 16:9 ratio, and it looks fine. Not sure if it was cropped in recent years, though).

Last edited by rioforce (January 13, 2015 (07:49pm))

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"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31b

"Real movie" 70s and 80s films weren't 4:3; a majority are 1.85:1 which is not much different from 16:9. There are also some anamorphic films in that time (2.35:1 typically) but to get the true anamorphic look you'd need special lenses. The brickfilm examples are 4:3 because they were shot either on 8 or 16mm film (Magic Portal) or tape video cameras which were 4:3 as they were intended for television-style use.

Tape and 70s/80s film are different aesthetics, I think tape is generally pretty ugly but if you want to emulate it you just need to shoot in deep focus and some blotchy, colorful noise on top.

As for film, a very subtle soft focus effect would help. I'd do this by making a duplicate layer of the video on top of the original, blurring that layer a very small amount (fast blur) and making that layer between 5 and 15% opaque. If you make it too heavy it becomes more obvious that it is an effect. To add grain and get the kind of colors of filmstock, you could use something like the amazing and totally worth the money Filmconvert software, but if you can't afford that then maybe creating a noise layer (flat gray with some noise on it) overlayed via an "overlay" blending mode at 5-10% would give sort of a similar feel.

You could just go out there and buy an actual film camera.

If you're going for a "classic" brickfilm feel, I would echo Pritchard in saying you should try use vintage bricks and building styles.  I'm not sure if it'd be possible to go all the way back to the 70s considering the minifigure only came out in 1979 (unless you're planning on not using minifigs).  That aside, I'd make the actual animation look different.  Back in the early days the "rules" of LEGO animation weren't around yet, so things like the 15FPS walk cycle hadn't been invented.  Maybe shoot at a slightly lower frame rate (such as 12FPS) and make the movements look more "wobbly".  All that aside, just watching a bunch of classic brickfilms, and analysing what makes them different from modern-day brickfilms, should be really helpful.

On a side note, I thought 4:3 was the same aspect as 16:9, with the only differing factor being that 4:3 is analogue and 16:9 is digital.

I disagree.  Even if you do end up showing it in a theatre, it'll still be a different aspect when you upload it to YouTube.  I feel it's pretty negative to view letterboxing as wasteful simply because it does not conform to a certain aspect ratio intended for a different media platform.  I wouldn't say one is any better than the other.  It's like saying one painting is wasting more space than another simply because it uses a canvas of a slightly different shape.  (If anything, I'd say the weird aspect ratio used for the majority of The Grand Budapest Hotel is a waste of space, though it was used for a reason, albeit one that I don't understand.)

The frame of a professionally made film will have been carefully composed by the director/cinematographer, and the choice of aspect ratio will certainly factor in a substantial part into the composition.  There are different composition techniques for Widescreen which can lend a whole different feel to the film.  Films such as Lawrence of Arabia or Ben-Hur famously use extreme widescreen aspect ratios (in the case of Ben-Hur it was even narrower than 2.35:1, I think).  Lawrence of Arabia in particular uses this composition to create a feeling of the vastness of the desert, and it would be impossible to achieve the same effect using, say, 16:9.  It's not accurate to say that one aspect ratio is inherently more wasteful than the other, both have advantages and drawbacks.

EDIT: Whew, that ended up being a lot longer than I expected.  Sorry for the wall of text.  Better get back on topic.

Last edited by Mr Vertigo (January 14, 2015 (05:34am))

I, too, have tried to emulate the look of film for several of my projects. However, I usually try for a more late 80's early 90's look - similar to films like "The Rocketeer," "Spy Kids," or "The Mummy."

Taking just a simple snap-shot from my webcam on a thrown-together Spaceship MOC gave me this:

I kept it a bit grainy because, well, film is grainy. It's no masterpiece, but, it's still a pretty nicely composed shot - the character being very far away from the background.

A lot of movies on film tend to have a very precise field of focus, and thus, would need to be recreated if you want a pretty nice looking effect.

Also, I thought the shot was a bit too bright, I wanted the spaceship to look darker - so, I also wanted to darken things a bit. This is really just personal preference on the lighting of your shot, however, once I made everything darker in GIMP, with just a few little adjustments, I really liked the outcome:

Ok, so, not perfect, but, definitely a lot better than the original, unedited frame. Overall, what I did was I put the figure on a separate layer. Then, I blurred the background a minute amount, darkening the overall image, and lighting up some of the lights. Then, I tried to match the figure to the background's lighting, only, I didn't blur him as much.

This actually is a bit of a better simulation of "what film looks like on DVD" but, at the time, that's what I was going for.

I did this test about 2 years ago, and, since then, have messed with editing frame by frame, and the Sony Vegas tools much deeper. You really just have to keep pushing yourself to work longer and more intricately when editing to achieve effects more and more realistic.

Overall, in the various methods I've done to emulate film, I try to keep the workload to under 5 minutes per frame, if I must edit like that. That way, I get the quality I want without sacrificing too much time. In Vegas, I usually just mess with the color correction more than anything else. You want things to have a deeper orange-ish tone, while still boosting up the other colors a bit too. That's usually what works for me.

Wow, I didn't expect so many tips. Thanks, guys! I'm going to answer a few of them, but I'm not going to go quote all of them because I don't have time.

@Squid, I will try the blur effect later on when I take a test frame (probably this weekend). I'll try to post a picture here when I get it for you guys to see.

@Pritchard Yes, I am using exclusively classic pieces. (Homemaker and retro minifigs, but don't tell anybody... ) I am also going to build using super basic bricks to emulate the classic style.

@Vertigo Haha, I thought about buying a film camera, but I have no place to get it developed (or even know much about film) I was thinking about using my normal animation style for the film, but actually, now that you mention it, I think I will make it slightly lower framerate. I want this film to look authentic.

@Squid (#2) Hmm. I only have a 58mm lens. I guess I could use my Nikon lens, but it has lots of light flicker issues, and I think that the Helios would look more authentic for the vintage look. I'll experiment, though.

@HOO Thanks for the font tips. I'm probably going to do everything in-camera, using some old stuff I have like my typewritter. I'm also going to see if I have an old label maker around (but I'm not sure if I have one...).

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"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31b

I concur with Sloth. Although focal length is a surprisingly confusing concept I did not fully grasp until after I made most of the brickfilms I've made. So while it appears Squid is confused about how focal lengths work, he's not showing any ignorance I did not have myself until relatively recently. It's unclear to me exactly what Squid meant, but there is a confusion of focal length and framing in his words.

Most of the time in filmmaking, focal length of a lens shouldn't really be about field of vision. They are about the look you're aiming for with a particular shot. It is common for grander, establishing shots to have wider focal lengths, and if you have very limited space (as in, you can't get the camera any further back because there's a wall behind you, rarely an issue in brickfilming scale) then that will dictate focal length choices. In general, you want a longer ("more zoomed in," higher number) focal length for closeups on people or in our case minifigs as this has a less dramatic, "distorting" effect on the shape of a face. But for wider shots, it's really a matter of how you're composing the shot; you can get a wide shot by putting that same 50mm lens further away from the set, which will give the feel of compressing the space.

Here's the best illustration I could find online of the concept. Tried to find something that wasn't portraiture, but this illustrates the concept clearly. The first column is a mid-shot at each focal length; the second is a closeup at each focal length, and the third column is a mockup of where the camera person would be in relation to the subject to produce each kind of shot.

My apologies for the confusion.

I'm in favor of no dialogue.

Write Dialogue, but as a reference to the visual. That's what I always do, I write the dialogue for what's going on so I have a better understanding of how I want my characters to move and act.