Song: Hazy Shade of Winter - Gerard Way feat. Ray Toro
Let me tell you a tale of how this whole thing came together. I suggest you get comfy, as this is going to be epic.
Let's start by setting the scene. It's July 2020, and we are well into the pandemic. I had been stuck at home on my own since March, and as my family is in Australia, I couldn't create a bubble. So, all the entertainment came from my head.
In short, if there is time to develop and execute this idea. That time was now.
The list of things I have done to entertain myself in lockdown is long, but like everyone, I hit points where I struggled. My saviour? Music.
I love music. It doesn't matter if it's from Film, TV, Musicals, Dance, Rock, Pop, or Classics; you name it, I will happily listen to it. Music soothes the soul, period.
One evening, I was sitting in the dark listening to music when I started obsessing over the musical breakdown of "Hazy Shade of Winter."
I don't know how long I listened to the song on repeat before it clicked, but at some point, I noticed a distinct breakdown of sections in the song where you could show two sides of a story. I was still determining the overall idea, but I quickly had a solid vision in my head.
Next was storyboarding, my idea. I needed to know what I needed for sets, the type of shots I was looking for, and how much time I had for each part.
Initial storyboard for the whole song.
Once I had the storyboard sorted, I started thinking about how I would take this idea from my head and turn it into an actual thing. Money was a big factor in this, so I needed something that would be flexible but cheap. The first idea I had was Play-Doh. However, after making my first batch, I thought this wasn't as good an idea. It took me a week to get the colour out of my hands.
I then thought about papier-mache. It was also cheap to make, and I figured I could make everything I needed with it. I will say now that this was, in theory, a good idea.
The first thing I made was some mountain backdrops. However, I quickly realised that if I wanted wider shots, I needed the sets to be bigger—like WAY bigger.
I then went and made a MASSIVE background for the sky. I bought mesh and papier-mache on both sides (twice) and then painted one side blue and the other side black. Sky sorted. #winning
The backdrop of the sky is made from wire, paper, and homemade glue.
Next was an iceberg. This was the first real test to see if papier-mache was the right approach. Below is the test shoot I did.
First, stop the motion of ice melting off an iceberg.
It looks great, right? Sadly, this is where I tell you that I have stupidly high standards. It's about the quality of the final product, and for me, this wasn't going to quite hit it. Especially as I needed blue tac to help show the melting of the iceberg, let alone how I was going to create people.
Back to the drawing board I went.
Finally, I came to the idea of Lego. Had I thought about Lego before? Yes, of course. I love Lego. But did I own any Lego? No! Could I afford to buy Lego?
No comment.
Using Lego did mean that I was going to reach the standard that I was looking for. However, as you will soon learn, it also introduced other hurdles.
Hurdle no. 1. The cost. OH, THE COST! (let's not talk about how much I may have spent...ever).
Solution: There was no way around the cost except to take my time and shop for good deals. I still had to eat and pay rent. Upside? I wasn't going anywhere, so the money I saved from not day-to-day travel to work or going out ended up going into this.
Hurdle no 2. Getting sidetracked with other ideas.
Solution: Accept that you are sidetracked and create the idea. I have too many ideas in my head to count, so sometimes I just have to go with them before I can return to what I was doing.
Besides, everything I made around this idea provided new learnings that I fed into the final video.
This is the first of many sidetracks that occurred while working on this. While buying some furniture for the houses, I bought a DJ set. I showed the DJ Lego set to a friend. They said I should have Batman behind the decks, and well, I then went straight into production to make an unofficial music video for their band.
I spent two weeks on this project and also made another short video. I made all the sets from cardboard, thinking I would reuse them. Again, it was a great idea in theory, but my high standards meant that only one of those original sets made it into the final film.
Various photos of me making the sets.
As soon as I got the batmobile, I had to do this. We would all have been disappointed in me if I hadn't.
Video of my Batmobile causing along.
While making the back alleyway, I was still waiting for Robin to arrive in the mail and getting impatient. So, I created this while I waited.
Now I know what you're thinking. Was this a waste of 4 hours? Probably. But if you watch closely, you will see that the light changes dramatically.
Hurdle no 3. The war between me and the light was about to begin.
After two weeks of finishing this project, I returned to the original video. Lego sets started arriving, so I started shooting while still using my kitchen bench. In short, I wasn't happy with them. Lighting issues aside, it wasn't what I had in my head. Again, Damn my high standards.
I am happy with how the music video turned out. I learned a lot from it - I lost count of how much I learned from making it.
Song: Defy Me - Heavy Vibes
Side note: Everything up until this point was shot on the kitchen counter and on my iPhone 8 using the stop-motion video app. I edited it on the same app.
By this point, we were well into October. Suddenly, I decided not to proceed. I thought, "Yeah, this is a great idea, but I don't want to spend any more money, and it was just too big of a project." Yes, you read right. It's TOO BIG, I TELL YOU!
So I walked away. Yes, I walked away. I went back to writing stories, and at this point, I bought a Nintendo Switch. Animal Crossing and Mario Kart became my life.
Then came the announcement from the UK govt. Lockdown 2.0! I'm sure we can all agree that we reacted in different ways. Some drank, others ate, and some vented their outrage at Christmas being cancelled on social media. I, on the other hand, went online and bought ALL THE LEGO!
Then, my living room began looking like this (yes, I was also doing a puzzle, so I got sidetracked again).
The second round of attempting to sort lego while doing a puzzle.
The original plan was to shoot the whole thing during Christmas and New Year's. With two weeks on leave, I was on my own, and this was a good idea... in theory. I spent a couple of days sorting all the colours (which was rather satisfying), and then I started to build out some sets.
Building out the sets did not go as well as I had hoped. Partly, this was due to my high standards, but also, again, I was just not sure how I wanted things to look. It was a lot of trial and error. At this point, I also decided to use the coffee table in the hope of more control over light and not completely losing the use of my kitchen.
Various states of my living room as I attempted to build sets.
Long story short, after trying to build sets, laying them all over my living room floor, and then getting through Christmas, I started to feel very overwhelmed by it. Seriously, this project was just huge. It's not like I didn't know this going in, but I realised that I really just didn't know where to start with it. So there was only one thing to do: Pack it all away.
Yes, I know. It's the second time I've given up. But I figured instead of trying to find my way through the fog and putting myself through unnecessary stress. I should just stop and come back to it when I was ready. I was never going to get my idea to come to life.
Roll into the new year. I went back to work and was well into writing Mission Stoppable. And before you say it, I know it was another distraction.
I'm still stuck at home and watching so much TV (so many shows and films watched in the last year). The stop-motion video idea is still strong in my head, to the point that I was struggling to focus on other things that I wanted to achieve. So, I accepted my fate; this was going to be stressful.
All the Lego was pulled out, and random cardboard and other rubbish I thought I might need was also brought out and sprawled out over the living room. It was worse than before.
The living room floor is in a disastrous state of affairs.
Around this point, I also got the new iPhone 12 Pro. I wanted a good quality camera. Yes, that is my justification, and I am sticking to it.
As you will know, lighting was still a problem to solve. Looking back, this was one of the many reasons I struggled to get this going.
Solution: Set up a mini tent on the coffee table in the corner.
I'll give you my solution! I will admit it had its drawbacks, but it worked. The biggest upside was that the lighting stayed consistent for longer.
This setup also proved useful for the three nights of night shoots I had to do for the globe and light pollution. I say three, as the globe spinning at the end had to be reshot due to my forgetting (yes, I forgot) to do the zoom-out at the start.
With this new setup, the mammoth task of shooting lay ahead. Below is a summary of everything I encountered for three months doing this.
Let's start with the sets. Every set you see I made from scratch, and let me tell you, I procrastinated HARD on making some of them. Those high standards, I tell you. It just had to be how I saw it. Some were easy, for sure, but others really needed some out-of-the-box thinking for them to come to life.
For example, the light pollution you will see, I tried a few different ideas, but nothing really worked. I found that doing it with just a light shining up gave the effect I needed. That's right, folks—less is more!
The first few options of trying to represent light pollution.
The world I made was from mesh and papier-mache. Painting the poles and sea was the easy part. Then, I procrastinated on doing the countries. I was afraid I would not get it right. As with everything else, I basically one day just sucked it up and went for it. I wasn't perfect, but I was impressed with myself with the end result.
Close-up of the handmade and painted globe.
Unlike the globe, the details of the news signs were done rather quickly. Why wasn't I as stressed about these details as I was about the globe, I hear you ask? I have no idea. But once I sorted the backdrop, I used velcro dots to swap each sign-out.
all the news bulletins are handmade and painted.
I had to build the city on the floor and then move it into position because it was just easier. I spent half a day figuring this out. Honestly, I wish I had more Lego to make the sets higher and bigger. I really wanted a nice zoom-out wide shot of the city. That didn't happen exactly as I had hoped, but the set is still pretty epic. (The photo below basically sums up that day as 'building all the big sets day'.)
The day I built all the big sets.
The residential street was the first set I tried to build out and ended up being one of the last shots I filmed. It was a struggle to get the size and roof right, and I didn't have enough Lego to do either. In the end, I stripped it back and just used cardboard for the roof. LESS IS MORE PEOPLE. LESS IS MORE!
I have to say I am rather proud of the Mars set. The end result was just great. I reused the container cups that Lego animals were stored in, and for the rocks, I just painted paper from delivery boxes. Yes, by this point, I was getting the hang of my new mantra: Less is more. I guess the third time is a charm!
Various angles of the final set design of people living on Mars.
There were many other sets in this, but I think we can all agree that these were the most epic.
Hurdle no. 5. Representation is key to any project.
Making sure that I had a diverse cast was high on my list. As much as my high standards caused me grief during this process, this was one of those times when it was the complete opposite. This is where Lego went from being my saviour to a massive thorn in my side.
The main problem was that I couldn't buy individual black Lego characters.
I looked online—everywhere. You name it, I visited that site. That's not to say I didn't find any. If they were black characters in Star Wars or Marvel, then yes, they represented black characters. The catch was that you had to buy the whole Lego set it came with—not on your own.
One site I found had loads of individual pieces. The cost of the item was, say, 3 pounds, but to post it to me was like 10 pounds. I cannot begin to describe my level of frustration, so very early on, I did give up. I honestly thought I couldn't find anything to help represent black people in my video, and to say this upset me is a true understatement.
I originally shot the opening with just yellow people. Yes, completely out of my mind for a short time, I accepted that I could represent everyone I wanted through yellow Lego people.
However, my high standards meant that I just couldn't let it go. As I have said before, I am about the quality of something I create, and not having the level of representation in this meant that the quality was less than expected, which was just unacceptable.
Seriously, why was this so hard?
So, off into the depths of the Internet I searched and finally found some on eBay from the Marvel universe selling for a reasonable price. I was happy. I rejoiced like you wouldn't believe.
Hurdle no. 5.1. You are way more limited with their facial expressions than with yellow Lego people.
In short, they all had stern faces, which was great when they needed to run away or fight. I get that they were Marvel and had to fight Thanos. The Snap was a priority. But they must have had some laughs at some point, right? Even if it was at one of the other Avengers' expense?
Hurdle no. 5.2. Their hands, lack of coloured arms, and heads didn't always fit with the other outfits of the yellow Lego people.
Finally, I had issues with their heads fitting into or not fitting into different clothes and their arms fitting into their new clothes either. So if you see the black Lego people with their hands slightly raised, it's because their hands didn't fit, and if I lowered them, they would just fall out. There was also the problem when I shot the beach, as there aren't any black arms. So, that also required some creative thinking to work around it.
Solution: ..............
Overall, I found workarounds and managed to make them work, but this could have been much easier than it needed to be.
Another distraction entered at this point. I was building out this website.
So, to recap, I started officially shooting this in January, and my living room looked like an overflow of popcorn from the frypan. Finally, I was down to the last few scenes in the second last week of April. After the final shots of everyone inside their houses were done, the shoot was over. It was a surreal feeling.
It was all filmed on the iPhone 12 Pro (remember, I needed that top-of-the-line camera) and used the stop-motion video app. I bought a clip tripod to put on the edge of the table so I could move it around. It also provided a light, which was useful, especially on those night shoots.
Now, the edit. I used iMovie to bring all of this together. About a week before I finished filming, I actually started editing. The main reason was so that I could see where the gaps were. To my amazement, I didn't have much left to go. But it was things that I was procrastinating over that I had left to do, such as the residential street and inside the houses. I also had to do some reshoots, like the final world shot (that damn lighting again) and the opening sequence with the new black Lego people.
The inside one of the houses and the night shoot of the world.
Fun fact: The longest sequence I shot was the first 46 seconds, which was actually the opening sequence I shot. The quickest one was the climate change shots. They were failed pour paintings of a wave I was trying to do. However, it worked out in my favour, and I was able to reuse them to show the effect I was trying to show with ice melting #nothingwasted.
Now, the ending. This was the hardest to figure out as it had to land on the beat and have enough different scenarios to make it work. I counted it out at least four times as I kept miscalculating it. It was the same when the pace changed, and I wanted each shot to be a second long. Again, my original count was wrong, so I kept thinking of ways to fill that time.
I should probably admit, that maths isn't something I am good at.
There were various attempts to figure out how many different shots I needed for the last sequence.
Another benefit of starting the edit before I finished shooting was that I had to slip in the final scenes once I had everything in order. This meant that the edit was also done when the last photo was taken. Let me tell you, me, chocolate, jelly beans, and chocolate milk had a party like you wouldn't believe that night.
The next morning, I awoke feeling like it was day one of the rest of my life. The idea that had been living in my head for nearly a year was now out. I spent that weekend honestly not knowing what to do with myself. It was the first weekend since January when my life wasn't consumed by Legos all over my floor!
I think we can all agree that I procrastinated and got distracted just as much as I did actually making the video. Of course, some of that was down to actually figuring out all the little problems that needed to be solved. More importantly, though I was stuck at home and had to be on my own, I had to make sure that my mental health was taken care of.
I took 3081 individual photos in total, including reshoots, used shots, and shots I didn't use.
Is it perfect? No. Are there things I would change? Yes. There were some things I couldn't get, or I would have preferred more Lego to make it grander, but there had to be a limit on what I could do (how much money I was willing to spend).
Will there be another?
Not right now. I have loads of ideas but not related to other stop-motion videos.
But will there be in the future?
If the right idea comes along, for sure!
In the meantime, I have a board full of other ideas that are awaiting me, so I am going to work on those until then.