Special Features

Spot those in-jokes

There are a few in-jokes early on in the film. Well, not even in-jokes - just references to other people's films. Check them out here

The expanding "device"

This was inspired by just picking up the LEGO chainsaw body that I got for Christmas and noticing that it had studs all over it that I could attach other bits to. I spent a while searching the web for the sounds of gears and cogs and machinery before realising that I had the perfect sound already - Tank Jr's taunt from Quake 3.

Here's a test I did to try to match the expanding movement to the sound. Apart from White rocking backward and forward, the timing is pretty much frame-for-frame what appears in the finished film.

Giant space mutants

It was never meant to be monkeys. The original script called for giant space mutants and I had the perfect action figure for the role: the rat creature from Jeff Smith's Bone. Just one tiny problem - it was too big to fit in the frame without doing a really wide shot and revealing the edges of the set. This came as a bit of a surprise with about 3 days left before the deadline and I had to do a quick rewrite on the spot to incorporate the monkeys (another Christmas gift). With hindsight, I think they work better anyway.

Here's a very short test which features the only surviving footage of the giant space mutant chowing down on Red.

Behind the Scenes

This page contains a few photos of what it looks like behind the scenes of the house set.

I didn't think to take any pictures of the street set or the camera rig I used for the tracking shot, which is a shame because that's the bit people keep asking me about. Basically, I lashed the camera to a LEGO plate, then built a LEGO frame around the plate so that it could only slide in the direction I wanted it to. I taped a ruler to the frame, which allowed me to move the camera exactly 1mm per frame. I then filmed about 120 frames of the guys walking.

Bloopers

This is a genuine blooper that happened when I was recording dialogue. Most of the film was pretty clearly scripted and worked out ahead of time, but in the scene where Rod appears, I just wanted Geoff to be yelling at Mike in the background while Rod did his narration. I thought I could just get in character and improvise something. However, it seems I'm not too good at thinking on my feet.

I was going to tag this on the end of the film after the credits, Toy Story style, but (a) I didn't have time to animate it and (b) it would have pushed it just over the 6 minute limit for the BricksWest 2003 competition.