Q. How long did it take you to do that?
A. The first scene we did started in August 2008 and the last scene was filmed in August 2009.
Overall we spent about 440 hours producing it. That is about 10 hours per second of film.
That includes all the planning and building and a lot of time just messing around since we just aren't that serious.
Plus we didn't know what we were doing.
Q. You guys have too much free time.
A. This is not a question. However, we do hear this a lot. All you have to do is borrow some of the time that
would otherwise be spent sleeping.
Q. Ha! I spotted a mistake in scene...
A. Check the original footage. In 99% of the cases we faithfully reproduced the original continuity and lighting faults.
Q. Did you notice that Neo's guns disappear in the Bullet Time shot?
A. Well this is like not noticing the elephant in the room. Did you notice that Mr Knife-in-the-eye dead dude
is also missing? Only 2 of the 5 dead bodies are visible in this scene. What about Trinity? The lighting changes?
We studied this part of the movie till our eyes bled. We know the velocity of each bullet, we know which side of the agent's head(s) his hair is parted on (yes, it changes), we know the names of the dead guys (one of them put the wrong jacket on), we know what "side" Neo dresses on and Steve can human beatbox the entire audio to the millisecond and you are seriously asking if we noticed that Neo's guns disappeared in the Bullet Time shot?!
Well, yes, we did notice.
We studied this part of the movie till our eyes bled. We know the velocity of each bullet, we know which side of the agent's head(s) his hair is parted on (yes, it changes), we know the names of the dead guys (one of them put the wrong jacket on), we know what "side" Neo dresses on and Steve can human beatbox the entire audio to the millisecond and you are seriously asking if we noticed that Neo's guns disappeared in the Bullet Time shot?!
Well, yes, we did notice.
Q. What about all the other continuity problems? Can you list them?
A. There are commonly many continuity problems in every film. We decided not to list them.
Actually there are no continuity problems in The Matrix at all!
This is because all actions take place inside The Matrix. What you see is just the rendering level of detail being turned down during the faster sequences due to inadequate Matrix CPU processing power. It is just more evident during bullet time sequences.
Actually there are no continuity problems in The Matrix at all!
This is because all actions take place inside The Matrix. What you see is just the rendering level of detail being turned down during the faster sequences due to inadequate Matrix CPU processing power. It is just more evident during bullet time sequences.
Q. Is there any CGI? Photoshop?
A. It was part of the design concept that all of the effects would be in-camera. That is, all of what you see in the
main movie is an actual unretouched photo (beyond colour correction, of course.) So there was no wire or support removal,
chromakey (green screen) or 3D graphics.
This was all very strange, because both of us are big fans of CGI and Photoshop and, after this, we won't be making that mistake again.
The title sequence and the end credits were done with LegoBoard.
There was one scene (scene 07 - Agent Reassembles) where the little smoke stacks were bumped. In every other scene where something moves or wires are visible, we just left it as it was, but in this scene it distracted the viewer too much. So for about 11 frames at the start of that scene it's a composite of 2 photos.
This was all very strange, because both of us are big fans of CGI and Photoshop and, after this, we won't be making that mistake again.
The title sequence and the end credits were done with LegoBoard.
There was one scene (scene 07 - Agent Reassembles) where the little smoke stacks were bumped. In every other scene where something moves or wires are visible, we just left it as it was, but in this scene it distracted the viewer too much. So for about 11 frames at the start of that scene it's a composite of 2 photos.
Q. Where did you get that camera rig for the bullet time sequence?
A. The Orbital Camera Rig (OCR) was custom built while standing in the hardware store.
You can read about it here.
Q. What's it like living in your parent's basement?
A. Eh?
Q. What Camera did you use?
A. The main camera used was a Canon IXUS 850IS. Not the most ideal camera for stop motion photography since it has little
manual control. But it does macro down to 3cm and has 7.1MP to allow plenty of room to crop (zoom) the image.
Q. Why didn't you use an SLR camera?
A. We do have one, but no macro lens for it. And certainly no budget to get one either.
Q. Are you guys pro animators?
A. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is only our second attempt at Lego animation.
Our first pitiful attempt can be viewed here.
Q. Any tips for my stop frame production?
A. We are hardly the right people to ask. Take a look here to see what we learned along the way.
Q. What is answer to every problem in stop motion photography?
A. More Blu-Tack.
Q. Are you going to do the rest of the Matrix now?
A. Well it took 400 hours to do 44 seconds. The original Matrix film is over 2 hours long.
So that would be about 25 years as a full time 8 hour a day job to do the lot. Maybe we would get better at it after a while,
but no, it is not going to happen.
Q. What are you guys going to do next? Any more stop motion Lego?
A. We are going to take a break from it for a while. We do have some other ideas.
Q. Why choose this scene to animate?
A. Well Trev had an interest in stop motion photography and Lego. The ads for Lego sometimes have models being built at high speed.
Both of us had been to a wedding where we dressed similarly to the characters in The Matrix with long coats and sunglasses.
Before we had to return the clothes we thought we would try to do a live action version of the same scene we did in Lego.
Unfortunately it didn't get finished. So it probably came from that.
