LEGO Fallingwater

My first stop-motion LEGO movie!  I don't think Lucas or Spielberg have anything to worry about!

The movie is based on the very excellent Fallingwater set designed by Adam Reed Tucker.  Fallingwater is, of course, one of the most famous buildings ever architected by Frank Lloyd Wright.  The actual Fallingwater was built in Mill Run, Pennsylvania in 1935.

I created the movie by snapping still photos with my old Kodak DX6490 4MP camera (over 1400 shots).  The JPEGs were then stitched together with JPGAvi into an uncompressed AVI file.  Music and credits were added in Windows Movie Maker -- which also rendered the file as an HD 1080p Windows Media Video (unfortunately, YouTube squashed the aspect ratio a bit on ingest).

Almost as soon as I started this project I made mistakes.  First, I built it on a soft ottoman in my home office -- because it offered a nice height to work at and presented a neutral background.  Since the top of the ottoman is plush, it was impossible to prevent the model from moving between frames.  Lesson #1 -- use a solid surface!!!  Lesson #2 is to do your best to preserve lighting.  You'll see great fluctuations in exposures and lighting over the course of the video.  So a very controlled environment is critical for stop motion/stop action.

Finally, I did no planning whatsoever for camera angles.  I didn't even read ahead in the instructions to see what was ahead of me.  In fact, when I started the model in December 2009, I figured I would be able to wrap it up in a few sittings.  Not possible with a fairly busy day job and an 18-month-old at home at night!  I got more creative with the building over the course of the project -- sliding structures in and out of the camera view.  None of it was planned before I actually did it.

I picked the project back up in February -- and accidentally repeated a step from the instructions.  This caused me to later run out of pieces.  LEGO is known for almost legendary quality control -- so it was surprising to me that this could have occurred.  Of course, there was nothing wrong with the set -- I had merely screwed up.  LEGO promptly shipped me the pieces.  Their web application for picking out the missing pieces from your set is quite awesome.  Unfortunately, I didn't pick up the project again until this month -- July 2010 -- but I wrapped it up in one more sitting.

I did not realize the building error until the very end -- after the movie was completed.  In fact, the mistake is apparent in the movie -- in the form of a gap between two levels.  Oh well.  Better luck next time.  The mistake has since been corrected.  LEGO Fallingwater now occupies a position of prominence (safely out of Elijah's reach) in our living room.

I think I'll wait until Elijah can participate before I try this again.  That will give me a good decade to prepare!