Well, I agree with you that's a useless thing to do... but as like all the hobbies. I just do it to entertain me, when I have time. It's not a competition, I'm not trying to be the first to do it. That's also why I prefer to do it alone. If you think it's a stupid thing to do, then you probably think that people who waste hours on a plastic model do a stupid thing too.
First because I love starwars. Second because I can train myself for stop motion and experiment plenty of stuff for the original movie I will probably make after this one! Moreover I did some little stop motion film with original scenario like "The speederbike" movie (and some other that stayed private).
I was quite impressed by the "StarLego" film made by Torps production the first time I saw it. But I was a bit disapointed because the starships were not built on lego (it was the original shot of Starwars). So near the coffee machine, I said to a colleague that I could remake the shots of the starships in Lego. That was quite of a bet, a challenge! Then I built the Star Destroyer, shot the scenes and show them to my colleague. At this moment he turns toward me and said "Great! Now you have to finish the film!". It was clear he was joking, but I just reply "Ok I will, just be patient", and then he let slip "You're mad...".
Well it's a difficult question to answer, cause it really depends on my mood. Sometime I do a lot of work in a small period, and sometimes I don't work on it for several days.
But we can make a little calculation to find an approximative date. At the moment I wrote these lines, I did approximativelly 30 % of the film for 2 years of work. So I need 4,66 more years to finish the missing 70 %. Ok let say 5 years.
So the release date is theoretically : january 2008!
Be patient young padawan :-)
No way! Remaking Episod 4 is already a hard work that takes me a lot of time.
I assure you that I will never do the other episods in lego stop motion, I'm letting other people (maybe you?) to try.
But after I finished Episod 4, I plan to do another long duration Lego stop motion film based on a book that I really like.
So it will be a totaly new experiment for me, cause I will have to write a script, think of the frame of the camera, add the sounds, the voices and the musics, etc... It will be more difficult than my LSW project.
YES! But only on the final film, when I will have finish it.
Sorry, but no. Come on, be serious. I can't waste my time burning DVD for free. Moreover I think it would be illegal for me to sell LSW. Instead of that, I will try to find enough space on the web to put the whole film in a better quality, but hey!, who knows how will be the internet and the connexion speeds in 2008?
Well... I don't know yet. The only thing sure is that I will build it in Lego :-)
For the large shots, I will certainly build a little Death Star, probably flat or like an hemisphere. See the making of for more details.
About the trench, I plan to build it approximativelly two meters long (or a bit more), perhaps at the same scale of the star fighters (which imply 70 centimeters in width and 40 centimeters in depth), or maybe two times smaller.
Wait and see...
The number of images per second for a movie is called the frame rate. For a normal film the frame rate is 24, 25 or 30 images per second (it depends on the standard NTSC or PAL). For a traditionnal cartoon, I think it's around 12. The frame rate in LSW is not constant, but I would say the average frame rate is around 5 images per second, sometimes it's less for example when it's a close shot of a character's face, and sometimes it's close to 20 images per seconds for example during a battle when the movements of the characters are fast. This variation comes from the way I do my film: when I film a shot, I don't count the number of pictures I must take before (except sometimes when I must film a very long shot); I film the action by moving little by little the characters, then I put the clip on the Timeline of Premiere and adjust the speed of the clip to fit the corresponding original shot. I work with a timeline at 25 images per seconds, and usualy I set the speed of the clips around 20% which represent 5 images per seconds. Here is an example:
