Click here to view the video on YouTube.

We’re very proud to introduce A Merry Christmas You Must Have, a short Christmas film like no other.

When we left them in Attack of The Blocks, the hapless Nervous Looking Man and Lead Woman were battling the odds to survive, while Lead Woman carried on an illicit affair with the unlikely Frankie. Fast forward 5 years, and the two have settled down in a quaint semi-detached somewhere near you, with their young boy Barry (paternity to be confirmed). It is here, on Christmas eve that we join the young family.

What ensues is a visit from Santa that Barry will never, ever forget.

Desktop Wallpaper

1680×1050

1440×900

Let us know if you would like us to produce the image for a different resolution.

iPhone Wallpaper

Download

Sharing

Did you like the video? Why not share it with your friends and family by copying and pasting one of the following options below.

Short URL: 

Video embed code: 

I have 2 resolutions available for now, but please give me a shout if you would like me to produce other resolutions for you.

Nervous Man

1440×900

1680×1050

Lead Woman

1440×900

1680×1050

Frankie

1440×900

1680×1050

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

To celebrate Halloween, we decided to make use of our supply of Lego and make a short film. Originally it was to be a narrative but we found it quite difficult to find a story that worked and made use of our wide range of Lego Minifigs. During our research we thought it would be a great idea to spoof a 1930s Horror Film trailer which would enable us to not have to worry about a narrative and concentrate on making fun scenes and loosely tie them together. The video took about 2 weeks to put together, only working on it about 1-2 hours a day around other bits of work which required more of our time.

There wasn’t really a storyboard, we just looked at our Lego Minifigs and watched many trailers on Youtube to work out scenarios to feature the characters in. Unfortunately some characters and ideas didn’t make it into the film mostly due to time constraints. One of these ideas was to feature a Minifig fighting with an Octopus to pay homage to Ed Woods ‘Bride of the Monster’.

With 2 weeks to go till our Halloween deadline, we had to keep the film simple. The benefit of the style we were looking to achieve meant we could take some short cuts and get away with using a black backdrop. The rig we used was a Canon 450D on a Glidetrack dolly, which gave the flexibility to move the camera into the set and keep it secure. To imitate the old film effect from 1930s-50s, we studied the old trailers and looked at the techniques of the time. For example we included a driving scene which was the only scene shot on film instead of being animated.

The car was placed in front of a Galaxy Tablet which played some driving stock footage. One of the fun elements of animating was that unless a big mistake was made that ruined a scene and forced a reshoot, small mistakes were kept in as a homage to Ed Wood (voted the worst director of all time) whose films were done in single takes with mistakes like moving set pieces kept in. One of my favourite scenes and one that was done early on was the Godzilla vs King Kong scene. We couldn’t imagine how it would turn out, but once I made up a demo set of a cityscape and placed the characters in, we knew we were on to something. What makes that scene funny for me is Godzilla, that you can blatantly see its a Lego man in costume, keeping in the theme of making a low budget looking film.

The text used in the film was both taken from and inspired by actual text used in the old horror trailers. The language used in these old trailers was both shocking and amazing, but unfortunately we couldn’t get all the ones in that we loved. But we put in as many as we could that would work with this film. The one line I wanted to keep but couldn’t get to fit properly was: ‘it will make you fall flat on your face with horror’.

The sound was the most challenging to sort out in a short space of time. It relied on finding as many free sound effects which I was fortunate to find so many that worked with the film, and the backing track was taken from Incompetch - a free royalty-free music database. The sound and final edit of the final was rushed and put together in one day, which I think adds to the charm of the film and the styling of the period it’s inspired by. So we hope you enjoy this Halloween treat. Let us know what you think and how many references can you spot?