Bloggaday 119 – My Lego Stop-Motion Entry

Bloggaday 119 – My Lego Stop-Motion Entry



The other day, I updated my status and sent a twitter out into the ethers about a video up on youtube, so I figured I might as well make a Bloggaday post for it.
Scott Sigler, New York Times Bestselling author, is releasing a new book. You can find his site at http://www.scottsigler.com/ , but as far as it concerns me at the moment, that’s not the important link. To launch his book he shot what would be a movie trailer for his book and put it up on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRY9eWlmBWM&feature=player_embedded . Which I happened to be on twitter when he posted it, so I got a chance to take a pic of this


Anyways, he started a contest where his junkies (fans) could create fan videos from a set a scripts he released for the book. A slightly… I just walked away for a few hours and I have no idea why I wrote “A slightly.” So I see that and think, cool. I could probably to a lego thing and it would be pretty cool. I kind of just wrote it off though.
He had another contest a few weeks ago for us to design the team logos for his new book, The Starter. I came up with a bunch of designs, but since my PC kind of crapped out on me, I didn’t have any software to make them look all nice and shiny. So I never entered the contest. This new contest kind of had that same kind of thing.
A week before the deadline comes (deadline is June 14th {tomorrow}), and there are only 5 entries. “Well man, there are 5 prize packages at stakes and there are only 5 entries with a week left. I’ve got to get some hucklebuck and put a video out.”
So I figured out what I was going to do and planned to do it. The first thing I had to do was build a contraption to hold my iPhone. Since I was going to have to bust out my old legos, I figured I would use my old bionicles to hold my phone. This ended up being the result


Looks like a good and proper Sigler piece if you ask me.
That was a pretty quick build though. I had to wait a couple of day to start filming though, and I had to do it at night. It’s the only way to control the light over the period of time it takes to make such a film.
I recorded the audio, but then came all of the decision about filming. I heard 30 frames a second for stop-motion clamation would make it seemless, but that sounded high. I figured 10 fps, but that was going to take too long for a nearly 3 minute video. I figured the frame count for 5 fps and where I would need to be after every paragraph. Before I started though, I decided to go to 2 frames and readjusted my count. I started filming and got about 20 pictures in and decided that it would take too long. It was already 12:30 and I wasn’t up for that much work. I ended up just going to 1 frame per second. If I had the time though, 2 frames per second would have been perfect.
The set itself was kind of overkill, but this is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, and I thought it would be much more elaborate than it ended up being. Here are 3 shots in panorama and a video of it.

I'm having problems posting these, so check out the facebook post or visit the photobucket page at
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&suggest&note_id=405785034647 or http://s1000.photobucket.com/albums/af128/daviddysart/Bloggaday%20Helper%20Picture%20Poster%20Upper/



I also made a crane setup for some shots.


Unfortunately, the app that zooms in was too much work inside the contraption I built for it, and I didn’t end up using it that night. When I looked at my footage the next day however, I was missing 5 pictures from early in the video, so I had to set some of my scene back up, and I ended up using the crane for my first 5 pictures of the film.
I was hoping that I could do the video without using any pegged lego ground, but that just wasn’t working out, do I ended having to break out a large green piece that I had. Unfortunately, it had a river running through it, so I had to try to shoot around it.
There are definitely some things I would have liked to have done better, but considering this was my first run at something like this, I’m rather proud of it.
For information about the contest and the rather phenomenal prizes, you can go here -> http://www.scottsigler.com/videocontest . You can also see the other entries there, but I wouldn’t recommend you watching them. That’s rather selfish of me since only the 5 with the most views are eligible to win, and I had a late entry so I’m kind of behind the gun.
I will plug this video though, because it’s going to win anyways. I posted a comment on it describing how it’s better than most of the stuff on TV. One note though, I think it’s rated R, so it’s NSFW. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIff3QNPLYA
Now for the important link, my video… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YRG1jkBd1M *

I think I have a real chance to place and a fluke ability to maybe somehow pull out a fluke, can you believe in miracles, win.

Listening to
Ancestor, Episode 2 by Scott Sigler

Twitter Tag
Papa need a new pair of shoes, 16 gig iPod, signed Ancestor, and $200

As Always, you can find my posts at these convenient interwebs
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http://www.facebook.com/thedaviddysart?ref=sgm if you can find my notes or +friend

Youtube Awesomeness
http://www.youtube.com/user/DavidDysart

For the Piccaday
http://s1000.photobucket.com/albums/af128/daviddysart/Piccaday/ Mass me by the month
http://thepiccaday.blogspot.com/ Me paced out by the day.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daviddysart/sets/72157623465996877/ Like witches at black masses

119 June 13





*Did I mention that I wanted you to go to this page and watch my video? Here it is again -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YRG1jkBd1M **
** See * (hint, it has to do http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YRG1jkBd1M)