Topic: Let's talk about comedy in brickfilms
I've been wanting to talk about comedy in brickfilms for a while, I feel like I frequently hear people complaints that there are to many comedy brickfilms or it's an overused genre or variations on those arguments. Over the course of my life watching films and recommending films to other people I have discovered an interesting thing, most people don't know what kind of films they like and cannot articulate why they like the films they do. I feel like a lot of folks making the claims that brickfilm comedies are too numerous are falling into the same trap, they are people who don't know what they like and can't articulate why they like the brickfilms they do like.
I don't really want to go into the issues I have with serious/dramatic brickfilms, but I do think that on a whole, there is a HUGE problem with comedy brickfilms and no one has articulated these issues better then Tony Zhou in his video essay on Edgar Wright: How to Do Visual Comedy. Be warned there is some [very brief] strong language in a few of the clips in the essay, but in all honestly if you aren't willing to watch and analyze a few R-rated films you should really be having discussions about film making anyway. He doesn't discuss brickfilms at all but if you replace the phrase 'modern american comedy' with 'brickfilms' everything is still true.
The point of Tony's essay, is that only relying on dialog to deliver comedy ignores the rest of tools film makers have at their disposal. When I sit down and watch a brickfilm and it ends up being two characters just talking at each other 9 times out of 10 I just turn it off. There is very little visually that engages me, it may as well be an audio book, and a poorly written one as often as not.
I find myself falling into the trap as well, lets face it, animating dialog where characters just stand around is easy, just wave an arm at a few key words and BAM! you've got 30 seconds of animation done. And while we brickfilmers are accustom to watching LEGO figs talking most 'normal' people cannot view a minifig as a person at all. I've been collecting LEGO for over 25 years, and I do see minifigs as people, I can find all the nuanced differences but when I show something to other folks they often can't even tell a male minifig from a female fig. So if regular folks have a hard time differentiating figs you should give them a reason to pay a bit closer attention to the visuals, they are problebly watching because they think minifigs are funny and/or cute, so reward them for paying attention with some sight gags. Film is a visual medium so if you are making a comedy keep the visuals funny.
Do you think people really watch films like Pokeballin' 2 because of the dialog, or maybe, just a though, it's because imagery like this is really funny.