Everything is awesome according to The Lego Movie. When it takes days and even months of filming to make a 10 minute Lego video, everything may be less than awesome, but that does not stop senior Mike Ewan from singing Legos’ praises.
“I first started creating these videos after I saw some films on YouTube during the beginning of middle school,” Ewan said. “I thought they were really cool, and I was like ‘how can I do that?’ I was always a Lego kid and you just can’t beat Legos, and I still like them. YouTube has been an awesome resource, and I put all my videos up on it.”
Lego stop motion films, or LegoMations, are animations of Lego bricks and characters to create a short film. Lego stop motion films, or LegoMations, are animations of Lego bricks and characters to create a short film. Although the end results are worth the time, Ewan said the process of creating Lego stop motions can be tedious and time-consuming.
“To make a half decent video, you need to start with a script. After that you need to build all the different sets in the films,” Ewan said. “You have to figure out the backgrounds and characters. Then you can start filming and that is just taking a bunch of pictures and slowly moving characters around. Once you have that, depending if you are making a more complex shot, you may have to edit it afterwards. Like if you want to show someone is moving through the air, you have to build a prop to hold the person, and you have to edit it out eventually. When you put everything together and set a length of each frame, finally you can add voices and sounds.”
Even though the process is tedious and time consuming, Ewan said he values the end product, despite the work his videos take.
“I have made a ten minute video and it took me months because I wasn’t working on it constantly,” Ewan said. “When it comes to ten hours a week, it adds up. There is no way of getting around it. It takes a long time and you have to get used to doing boring stuff over and over again, but the end results are worth it, and it is fun putting ideas in Lego form.”
Grant Wallace, senior and Ewan’s friend, said he created a Lego stop motion scene once and understands Ewan’s passion for the time-consuming hobby.
“One time I tried filming [a Lego stop motion video] myself and if I had time, I would love to create more,” Wallace said. “It’s just so cool. I made a ghetto version with army men, and even in its ghetto format, it was beautiful. It took four hours to get thirty seconds, but it was beautiful at the end. It made me think of Mike’s videos, especially the videos Mike took a lot of time on, the ones you know took weeks, and it made me realize it is so awesome. The fluidity of all the pictures is amazing.”
Ewan creates the videos by himself, but he has had friends help him voice his films.
“I helped Mike a few times with school projects,” Logan Ejupi, senior, said. “The voice overs are pretty quick. I just sit in front of a computer with a script and it usually takes three to four takes for each line. It takes one to two hours tops, which is nothing compared to the days of work Mike puts in to creating the animation.”
After collaborating with Ewan, Ejupi said he is amazed at Ewan’s motivation and dedication to create the short films.
“I think it’s incredible. I’ve seen the set ups he has had in his basement before for ongoing projects,” Ejupi said. “The amount of time his puts into it and the detail is so cool to see. I never watched him work, but I have talked to him enough to know the work that goes into moving each mini figure just a fraction of an inch, hundreds or thousands of times. It’s a really cool hobby to have.”
Ewan has had his friend Wallace also voice over his videos. Wallace said he is fascinated with Mike’s diligence and work ethic.
“His videos are fantastic. I didn’t realize you could make something so artistic, something so artistic by taking a lot of photos and putting them together,” Wallace said. “I mean, that’s film in general, it is just a bunch of pictures, but we don’t realize it. When you have that much detail and focus, it is really amazing what you can come up with.”
Although Ewan has not made as many videos lately, he said he would like to continue creating videos if he had the time.
“I have written scripts for stuff, but I haven’t had time to make them,” Ewan said. “There are other things I want to work on, and now I am focusing on college. In middle school, I considered going into something film related while I was creating these short films. Now I am going into engineering, but it is the same idea of building stuff and seeing how things work, which is some of the creativity that comes from Legos.”