Haunted Bricks: Trilogy of Terror

Haunted Bricks: A Triptych of Horror from Jim Groom on Vimeo.

Miles and I are entering our brick films stage. I knew it would happen at some point, and I’m really glad it has finally arrived šŸ™‚ We used a Canon Rebel to take the shots—we have a lot of fine tuning to do and I now have my hands on a tripod—and played around with three different haunted scenarios using the Monster Fighters sets that are out now. Miles got the Haunted Castle for his birthday last week which was part of the inspiration for us to make this, the other part is we can’t have our neighbors showing casa bava up with their brick films—we have to get cinematic! We’re just getting the hang of it, but it’s really a blast to plan the scenes out together. I think we’ll be getting more elaborate pretty soon given how east the first run was. For now we just wanted to experiment with how much you need to move the figures to make it look convincing, and it’s less work than I imagined.

As for the technicalities, here’s a quick overview of our process. We got some good lighting and set up the lego sets on a table in the attic with full accessibility. We then took over 166 still images of all the different actions. When we finished with that we imported them into iPhoto, deleted the bad ones then imported the whole lot into iMovie. From there we changed the still duration from 4 seconds to .3 seconds for all stills and then tweaked the opening shots to last longer for an opening effect. Once we had the basis of three shorts films we broke them up with titles and then went to freesound.org to finish the film with appropriate sound effects. The film is very rough yet, Miles and I hope to get to the point where we are recreating scenes from classic horror and scifi from from the 70s and 80s šŸ™‚ Parenting has been a lot of fun as of late.

Sound Credits:
Main Theme DJ Chronos’ Ambient Darkness
Monnie101’s Car screeching (Car_Stops_Breaks_Screech_Engine-Rev_by-monnie101.mp4.WAV)
Timbre’s Cartoon (rubber) catapult
Creativeheroes’ Hemlut Scream
Herbert Boland’s Footsteps (footsteps.wav)
Melack’s jumping (salt 1.wav)
Cognito Perceptu’s hammering 2.wav
Tomlija’s Horror Gate
Raubana’s body falling over (Body Fall Over.wav)
Freqman’s concrete blocks moving
jaide714’s sword hit.wav
Sea Fury’s monster 4.wav
Sofie’s Bat Sounds
TurtleLG’s Jail Door Closing (JailDoorClose.wav)
HardPCM’s Metal Chains (“Metal002.wav”)

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3 Responses to Haunted Bricks: Trilogy of Terror

  1. Ben says:

    “The Very End”

    Awesome work you two! We may have to do a short of our own over at the Rimes household with homemade LEGO transformers we’ve been building lately.

  2. GNA says:

    Please forward to Miles.

    Dear Miles,

    First, happy belated birthday! I hope you had an excellent day. How’s school been for you? Did you have a cupcake party there on your birthday? Do they do that anymore in school? Hmmm.
    Second, I really like this video. It’s pretty neat to see your creativity move beyond the static Lego structure-building into films. I also dig that you and your dad are collaborating on the project. How cool is that?
    Last, I had my headphones on when I started the movie and the volume levels about killed me. Maybe in your next go around, you could do some sound checks. Try listening to the video on a variety of different devices.
    Can’t wait for the sequel!
    Keep on rocking in the free world, and building stuff.
    Love, DrGarcia

    • Reverend says:

      @Ben,
      I think it is time the Rimes’ bring it on. We would love to have folks create alongside of that we know. Could be a blast šŸ˜‰
      @GNA,
      I will share the comment with Miles, but I have to take responsibility for the screeching brakes being too loud. I was on sound effects duty. We’ll try and clean that up GNA. You rule for watching. I’ll have Miles reply to your comment tomorrow

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