Bricks in Motion: STAR Competition

The live screening of the STAR entrants took place on Sunday, and luckily I was there to cover the event for Brickspace. The films were shown on one page of the BiM website, with a small chat widget embedded below it. The videos were changed as the people chatted below. This is a hard thing to pull off, and as a result it caused mine and many other people's browsers to crash - it was clearly determined that Internet Explorer was certainly not to be used.

So yes, there were a few glitches - and the chat had its problems as well. Apparently my browser 'reconnected too fast' and so it took many page-refreshes to login to the chatroom, which meant also refreshing the video I was watching.

The event had a clear schedule, but it turned out to take twice as long due to people not having finished watching the films and general lag. This is all justified, but Sméagol (Philip Heinrich) did make the mistake of putting his American timings in GMT instead of whatever time zone he was in, meaning I was waiting expectantly for it to start when in fact I was one hour in front of everybody. There were three main sections of films, each started by adverts provided not only by Sméagol but as a result of the STAR trailer competition, and some previews for other films too (they'll be covered below). Heinrich announced the films being shown in the chatroom, amongst the non-stop chit-chat of people asking what film would be on next, and other annoyingly pointless questions.

Unfortunately the time zone difference caught up with me and, having stayed up late to go to see the film Moon in London the night before, I had to stop watching at the first break. However, I did get to see some great stuff in the time I was there.

Whirlwind tour of the first section of BiM Live? Sure!

Well, it started with some trailers, the best of which being that for Picturesque, a film by Nick Durron set in the future where people can use 'picture portals' to transport themselves around the globe. There are some fantastic effects shown in the trailer, and I can't wait for the full film!


Next up was Sméagol Studios with their latest film, Space Opera, to be released in early 2010. The trailer didn't show much, but what we saw, we liked. Great music, too.



Now onto the three best entries into the STAR competition (in my opinion). Unfortunately BiM hasn't put up a full list of films and their YouTube links, so I can't find the ones I don't remember the name of.

Firstly, there's David Boddy's fantastic entry, Cyclic. This is certainly a success for Boddy (a reader of this blog, as it happens), for it includes some great special effects and new animation techniques (most notably in the two robots on LV 426). The plot is quite quick, but you can still keep up with it whilst understanding most of it. However, like many of the STAR entires, Cyclic needs to be watched twice to be fully understood. Nevertheless it's a fantastic film and I hope David makes more like it in the future.



Next is The River, a haunting film made by Winkyburger. Once again, the plot may not be understood completely in the first viewing, but in this film, it's a joy just to sit back and admire the 'feel' of the film. The cinematography is perfectly composed, with beautiful colours and spooky lighting effects... you won't forget this film easily. What made it 'magical' for me was the scene with the native people performing their ritual: maybe it was just tiredness and the darkness around me whilst I watched it for the first time on Sunday night, but this film was really spooky. Second time round, it still maintains some of that atmosphere.


Finally, there's the latest film by Leftfield Studios, Mind Control. Leftfield Studios, who have produced such legendary films as The Great Disturbance and Aladibababad (I was singing that theme tune for days), have returned with a great new film! Sure, it's nothing special, but it has an interesting plot and is a bit more... stable that the other entries. It also contains a Lego atom, so +1 awesomeness.


I hope you enjoyed that! If you have a link to any other good STAR films, please put them in the comments below!

~John