Bricks in Motion
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Forums - Bricks in Motion » General Film Discussion » Brickfilming Discussion Week 7: Areas of Improvement
I must confess I feel rather bad now that everyone is saying they're tired of comedies ...
I'm hearing you. Here I am sinking weeks into a Star Wars comedy no less. rofl lol chortle. Ah hem.
Anyway - I brick film for me. And my voice actors/tresses. I'll return you to your thread.
I'm not entirely sure I'd be able to write "good" female characters.
The ability to write a good female character depends entirely upon your ability to write a good character. If you're not sure how to do it, just write a guy and then later switch it around to a girl and change the name and all of the gender specific words to be appropriate. So long as you can write a good male character you should be able to write a good female without a problem.
I did this with both How to Not Rob a Bank and Welcome to Darkmoor and that seemed to work pretty well.
(Well, technically How to Not Rob a Bank was never written at all. I thought up a mental script and memorized it by heart but you get the point)
Constance and Sam were going to be guys, but I decided I'd use the women because I thought the colours of their designs looked cool and it would help the overall visual appearance of the film.
That said, I don't think gender ratios are actually that important; it's quality.
Actually, that's true. I think quotas are silly. I still would like to see more females in the genre, though.
the best way to deal with that is own good recording equipment and ask women you know to do voice work for you. You don't need to be good friends with them, you just need to know them well enough that they don't think you're creepy
I found this statement extremely funny, whether intended or not. You also say you should focus on your writing. After reading your above post, I can say that you have what it takes to be a great BF (Brickfilm) writer.
Having two females in lead roles, and one a teenager, has led me to writing in a lot more females as her friends for scripts to future episodes. I found out that if you are a guy and don't think that you can write girls, you can do two things: 1) read Tiger Beat and Seventeen magazine, and 2) read posts on http://twitter.com/hashtag/girlproblems.
The second option saves the embarrassment of buying such magazines or getting caught reading them, and also, as #problems, they may inspire a conflict for your story. One of the main questions you can ask to make your story interesting is "what can go wrong?" Just like an episode of 24, whenever it seems like they are about to stop one of the baddies, something goes wrong. Things going wrong adds suspense, and the audience wonders how will they get out of it? I think character-based solutions are the best.
Okay, I'm getting off-topic, but maybe not. I think good writing/storytelling is the most important area that can be improved.
To clarify my statement:
Several things,
One being that we lean less on fancy lighting, big detailed sets and flashy effects to make our films good, and look back to the core issues of storytelling, pacing, and character development.
Now, I wasn't saying by any means that we can trash everything else for stories. Nope, not at all. I said lean less, not abandon. Looking at classics, everything seemed* more basic. Straight, less detailed walls, plain rooms, not a lot of advanced building techniques, more limited effects work, and little super-fancy lighting. Plain minifigures in somewhat plain and boring sets with just normal lighting and lacking that nice clean HD look...But the story held you in. Now it seems* to be more the visuals that hold you in. We make use of more effects, more special lighting, super-buttery-smooth animation, and a lot of other really good things that are great to have. But it seems* that perhaps brickfilming as a whole has gotten away a bit from the goal of telling thrilling stories and developing characters. I'm not saying to drop all these great improvements, but to be wary of making them the focus or spending too much time on them over other things. Do ya'll get what I'm trying to say?
*This is a personal opinion, and a closer, more detailed, non-linear, non-subjective examination of the hard facts may yield other results.
Also, there's nothing wrong with a comedy, my next film will be one. But it's more the ratio of those being so much higher, and those tending to be super-short one-liners that don't go anywhere that could use improvement. An intelligent, more thought out, comedy can be great fun and very entertaining. But like anything, it needs time and effort put in to make it like that.
Being More Involved in Animating as a Whole
I would say I'm pretty active on the forums. But, when it comes to actually getting around to making brickfilms themselves, I wouldn't say my activity levels are very high. I usually put out a ratio of 3 films every few months. But, I do think I shall get back to animating something this summer, with BRAWL 2014 coming up in July.
It's always difficult, however, to find the time or motivation to brickfilm. Any brickfilmer understands that. But, that's not too big of a problem. Because, when I watch a super-awesome film that someone made, member or non-member, it really makes me wanna animate something.
And then, when I am animating, I listen to others' feedback. I redo shots,. I use adhesives to secure pieces and sets. I adjust lighting levels. I do try. And as the saying goes, try, try again. In this case, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again.
Something I would like to see more of is different formats of Lego animation besides movie formats and interactive games.
For instance, lego animations using a TV style format.
Instead of having a longer film, instead you could make a bunch of 1-3 minute episodes and release them on a weekly basis (a little like what forrestfire tried to do with his video game hobbit films). It would require greater focus on telling stories, but it seems like it could be a cool idea.
More collaborative projects would also be cool.
Women.
Brickfilming one of the most male-dominated things I have ever seen. Of course, 'Male-dominated' doesn't always mean sexist. It's just that few people here know a female voice actor. Ever since Emily Boyle vanished, there have been little to no female characters in Brickfilms.
And I feel awful, because I'm just as guilty as everyone else. I'm about to start a massive project that features no female characters. Post your hatemail to any of the links below.
Max, I've been thinking the same thing lately. I was wishing I'd feature more female characters, but out of habit I automatically use male characters because I'm lazy or they're already built or the voices are easier to get etc. etc.
I did write a script about a female protagonist earlier last semester, but it was so weird I didn't know what to do with it. It wasn't that the female character was weird, it was just the story itself.
However I am working on a future project that involves a couple female characters, if my plans work out. 
As for other things I really could improve on a lot of stuff. There's so many aspects to brickfilming and film making in general that I feel like I'll never really be "great" at any of them.
I agree completely to the fact that females have had no large role in brickfilms but there is no point in me rehashing whats been said about our medium being mostly male-dominated
Funny enough though I began writing a script for a animation that features a Red V Blue style thingy with the four main characters being two males and two females. It will be good to see the outcome!
I have to agree about the lack of female characters problem. I've had a project that has been on hold for a year because, among other things, I can't find a female voice actor for a crucial role. Most of the girls in the theater program at school are either to tied up in acting in other stuff to do it or not confident enough in their ability to act without being able to use anything but their voice.
(Also, the fact that I haven't had too many girl friends before last school year may have been a factor, but now I got all tha ladees.)
I can't say I blame them, because I think that while regular acting and voice acting are similar in principle, the challenge of only having your voice to act with can be a bit strange for someone who isn't used to it.
The issue of not having as many girl brickfilmers is one that can't really be changed. If people don't want to brickfilm, then they don't, so I guess we just deal with it.
Another thing that may be an interesting change would be for us to start communicating more with other international brickfilmers, such as the ones on Brick à Brack. Yes, there is a language barrier that kind of makes that hard. But I believe that we have so much to offer each others communities that it should really be explored.
Another thing that may be an interesting change would be for us to start communicating more with other international brickfilmers, such as the ones on Brick à Brack. Yes, there is a language barrier that kind of makes that hard. But I believe that we have so much to offer each others communities that it should really be explored.
I recently got to help a French brickfilmer with a film he wanted to make in English. He can speak English pretty well, but it's not absolutely perfect, so he had me review his script so that I could fix it to make it sound more natural in English. I may not be able to speak French, but with his rough English translation I was able to get the general meaning and perfect it to something that sounded naturally English.
There are sometimes when I wish that I could speak French just so that I could go and talk to people on the French forums and watch more French brickfilms. Occasionally though I'll watch a French brickfilm even if it's not translated. When I do I make a fun game of it trying to figure out what's going on.
Iver Jensen is a pretty good Norwegian brickfilmer who speaks English well and sometimes is on here as Soppenjim. I talk to him a bunch on Twitter and learn random interesting facts about Norway.
Those who have run out of options on BiM finding female talent may want to try http://voiceactingalliance.com. I found several, including one who did a very good Ann Coulter impersonation (after I asked the real Ann Coulter to appear and she never replied I don't know why I also asked the female from Los Microwaves and Alex Zander of Xex to do a voice, but again, no answers). Anyway, VoiceActingAlliance.com is a healthy source of talent.
Can you tell me more of brick a brack? BTW, addressing the language problem, http://worldlingo.com is a great translation web site that I use when I post to BFers here when English isn't their first language. If you write cautiously, avoiding any idiomatic English, you'll get a good translation.
Also, there's nothing wrong with a comedy, my next film will be one. But it's more the ratio of those being so much higher, and those tending to be super-short one-liners that don't go anywhere that could use improvement. An intelligent, more thought out, comedy can be great fun and very entertaining. But like anything, it needs time and effort put in to make it like that.
One thing that bothered me is that many people think that the writing standards for comedy is somehow lower. Acting in comedy is performed just as seriously, and it's harder to write, I think, because you're trying to both write a solid story just as in drama, and at the same time try to make an audience, all with differing tastes in humor, to laugh.
Last edited by HoldingOurOwn (June 18, 2014 (06:51am))
Some film scholars feel that film should be completely dialogue-free for this reason. I don't totally agree with them, but I do see some merit in this viewpoint - that you can tell a story purely on image, no voices needed. Some brickfilmers are of a similar opinion, too, though no names immediately spring to mind.
All my films thus far have had zero dialogue, though this has had more to do with convenience and fitting the style of the film rather than any for want of a better word artistic beliefs of mine. And my next film is going to involve a load of dialogue so it's not something I intend to keep doing.
I remember reading somewhere that this belief was widespread back in the days when talking films first appeared--I believe it was H. M. Warner who said "who the [geographical opposite location of heaven] would want to hear actors talk?" (his words, not mine). Of course, given that there are more critically acclaimed films today with dialogue than without, and that 2012's The Artist was the first silent film since the 1920s to win an Oscar this viewpoint doesn't seem particularly convincing. And in many films/TV shows the dialogue is often the strongest part, so it seems rather counter-productive to argue this.
The ability to write a good female character depends entirely upon your ability to write a good character. If you're not sure how to do it, just write a guy and then later switch it around to a girl and change the name and all of the gender specific words to be appropriate. So long as you can write a good male character you should be able to write a good female without a problem.
Yeah, this occurred to me. However, most of the really good brickfilming characters I come up with usually always male. When coming up with characters I often get a very specific picture of what they look like (even knowing what exact bricks I want to use to build them) so I often find it difficult to change. I guess making up female characters doesn't come very naturally to me. Though in my next film I do have at least one female character, and two that could be either male or female depending on what sort of voice actor/actress I get (personally, I'm hoping to make at least one of these as-of-this-moment-ambiguously-gendered characters female) so there's that.
Now, I wasn't saying by any means that we can trash everything else for stories. Nope, not at all. I said lean less, not abandon.
Of course, I didn't think you were implying that. It would be stupid to completely abandon all visual/technical improvements. I just felt it was worth remembering when everyone was talking about better stories that the way of conveying a story is just as important as the story itself. Though, I do love the "classic" brickfilm look--even though the quality is grainier and the sets usually simpler and more brightly coloured, it somehow has a nice nostalgic feel to me.
One thing that bothered me is that many people think that the writing standards for comedy is somehow lower. Acting in comedy is performed just as seriously, and it's harder to write, I think, because you're trying to both write a solid story just as in drama, and at the same time try to make an audience, all with differing tastes in humor, to laugh.
I've heard that as well. Quite ironic, given that comedies are generally less critically acclaimed than serious films. Of course, there's a difference between comedy and good comedy...
Last edited by Mr Vertigo (June 19, 2014 (09:37am))
I don't know if this falls into an area of improvement, per se, but one thing that I would like to see brickfilming return to trying to tell whole, complete stories. I understand that this is far easier said than done, and not all of us have the time, resources, or interest to make films like this happen all the time, but I know that the LEGO medium is truly capable of telling some really interesting stories with the proper effort and execution. I think back to films from old, such as Out of Time, Good Company: Redux, and even Grace. I think this issue also bleeds somewhat into the previous "cult of YouTube personality" topic - the desire to crank out films regularly tends to come at the expense of real thought and patience in filmmaking.
Granted, I feel like a bit of a hypocrite saying this because it's not often that I make a film that fits that criteria, though I will say that I believe creativity begets more creativity. When I watch a film that truly inspires me, I am overcome with the desire to create something just as worthy, and I think that kind of mutually-beneficial give-and-take could lead to a really healthy creative environment here. Also, just to mitigate my argument from before, there have been a few films from this year that are good examples of the kind of 3-act storytelling I'm talking about, such as STEAMPUNK and, more recently, the excellent Time for $ale.
Also, to toss my own hat into this ring, I would also like to see an upswing of female characters in brickfilms a well. I understand that finding girl VAs can be a bit of a struggle, but it's certainly far from impossible. So many brickfilms tend to be told from the male perspective, having some films about women would be a nice breath of fresh air.
Last edited by MindGame (June 19, 2014 (03:47pm))
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