This video was a collaboration between myself and my son. We had recently gotten some new base plates and set them up around the LEGO mountain police headquarters (set 60174). We were playing and created a little bridge with some water running under it. My son set the police minifigures down on it and started pretending they were taking a break from work.
I setup the camera on the tripod and we started taking pictures. We didn’t really have a plan for what would happen but after a while my son started moving the bad guys in the background and we thought it would be funny if they escaped while the police were on their break. He did most of the movements for the minifigs in the background while I moved the 2 officers that were in focus in the front.
Initially the bad guys were going to go up to the police office on top but it would be too hard to see them do anything. I suggested that they steal the police truck instead. This lead to the humorous outcome of the police officers being surprised as the crooks drove by.
We actually ran out of space on the table while driving the truck away so the police truck kind of abruptly disappears at the end. You can see the tables edge in the video the whole time.
It was a fun video to do and my son really liked surprising the police officers.
Details:
- Shot with Stop Motion Studio
- iPhone camera
- 164 Frames
- 9 fps
Things to improve on:
- Plan out the scene to make sure there is enough space if charaters or vehicles are moving
- Lighting wasn’t great for this since it was done in a sitting room with large windows during the day
- The water under the bridge could have moved a bit to show that it was flowing river
- There needed to be a few more sounds for the characters, such as typing or chatting between each other
- The getaway is a bit fast. We only took a few frames of the truck moving. It needed more to give the viewer time to realize what was happening
- One idea we had afterwards was to have the crooks stop beside the police officers and wave to them before driving off again. This would have given time to give a better reaction from the police officers
- The surprise of the police officers is not great. We didn’t spend much time playing around with their reaction. Then again a six year old only has so much patience and they want to see it finished