The Bulls New Caravan

Vimeo (Download Quicktime MP4, 640x360, 28.32MB).

YouTube (HQ Widescreen)

24 hours makes for some hard work, but it was also a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy my entry and good luck to all the other THAC6 brickfilmers.

Scripting
When the theme was announced it was 11:00pm here in Australia. I looked at my Lego models and started writing a script.

The creator Ferry was my newest addition which I received as a birthday present. It also contained a red car and a caravan. I just needed some minifigs.

The Bulls are the outlaws from the year 2000 castle series but unlike all the other bad guys they never had a castle. Cedric the Bull is their leader so I have him driving the red car while the rest get drunk in the caravan.

Hence the title "The Bulls New Caravan"

Animation
It took 12 hours to capture all the 654 frames. Some frames were not used however.
In one scene, a close up of the control panel (Nick from the props department), I forgot to add the MOD element. I only noticed during editing. The keyboard had a letter A but Nick's arm blocks the view. So that scene was cut from the film.

It took me three takes to get the Ferry arriving at the dock the way I wanted. So I wasted about 50 frames there. Most scenes worked first take but on occasion I got a dozen frames in and then noticed something wrong. The only scene I would re-shoot now would be the car crash through the fence, it didn’t have enough impact needing more pieces flying off.

In the final film there are a total of 16 sets, abeit some are quite simple. As each scene was recorded the set was stripped down and re-built. I have Lego everywhere, it will take a few days to clean up all the mess I made.

Editing
I spent almost 8 hours editing the frames. There are 6 video tracks and 9 audio tracks.
All the action scenes are at 25fps and the scenes with dialogue are 12fps

Sound
With several sound FX CD's it still takes ages to find all the sounds and edited them in. I never did find any decent Nascar sounds. I could have sampled Pixar’s Cars but it all takes time.

Hardware & Software
Logitech 9000 Pro - I hadn't tested this camera enough and used a poor quality monitor for previewing. As a result I only got one scene with the white balance set correctly so the colour registration is not very good.

Capture - AnimatorDV+, Editing - Adobe Premiere, Sound - Cool Edit Pro 2.0

Spoilers (Highlight to read)

I scripted 3 major scenes but only two got recorded due to time constraints. The missing scene involed Nick from props with two Robots. One was mini-fig scale which I actually built. He had moveable legs & arms and could bend at the waist.]

I turned off onion skinning while capturing the walk cycle of the brave outlaw. The randomness this created makes him stagger and lean a bit as he is supposed to be drunk. ]

The angry bull at the end is meant to be surreal as it was to represent how the Bull outlaws saw it while they were drunk.]

The ferry construction was recorded as the last ferry scene because I actually pulled it to pieces. The finished frames are just run in reverse order to make it appear to build. The ferry docking was also recorded in reverse so that the platform lowers perfectly onto the wharf.
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Last edited by pe668 (January 12, 2009 (01:26am))