Behind the Scenes of Stan's Secret

Back in late December, I went to LA with a bunch of friends for a week. While at the Mexican border, doing some outlet shopping (which I did not partake in I'll have you know *flashes casual sweatshirt and jeans*), another non-outlet shopper by the name of Stan and I created the idea of a movie about a store that sells secrets. That idea ended up being called Stan's Secret. It was one of the those things that really only seemed funny because of sleep deprivation, but it was weird enough for me to want to try to make it.

A bunch of punchlines were brainstormed, such as "I LEARNED TO WALK... hehe... when I was 11 months old". Just hilarious. Obviously we weren't getting much sleep on that trip. As it turned out, Stan had heard of a delightfully creepy sentence back in Canada. It involves butter and a slug... you know how it goes. Anyway, that's the punchline I went with.

A couple weeks passed and I decided it's time to make another video. Luke Dickey agreed to do the voicework for Stan, which I think really sold the film. And since my T3i still hadn't shown up (Mega Bloks has told me it's being shipped this week), I had to borrow that trusty old T2i that I used in An American Thanksgiving and A LEGO Star Wars Christmas. I animated all of the dark scenes first, as those were the highlight of the film. My lighting setup included a big light from above, illuminating the main character, a fill light farther back, and a lamp behind orange gels crouched at the back of the scene. That orange light is noticeable in the scenes with Stan. I'm not sure if it makes any sense for that orange light to be there, all I know is it looks SO COOL.

Spoiler alert. The butter wasn't actually butter. Stan rolled around in margarine. There wasn't much butter in the fridge at the time, and I needed a lot, so margarine it was. The first take of the butter roll scene was accidentally filmed with a clothed version of Stan, and that's just not right. Luckily I realized that about 30 frames in, so it wasn't too big of a loss.

I used the Dragonframe controller for all the animating, but with butte-margarine all over my hands I refused to touch it. Ziploc bags to the rescue.

This last picture is of me cleaning Stan. It was 2 in the morning at that time, but there was no way I could sleep knowing there was Lego covered in dairy products. Word of advice: if you roll a Lego guy in margarine, you will suffer the consequences. That stuff got stuck everywhere.

A lot of you have asked what exactly I'm doing at the very end of the actual Stan's Secret video. I'm doing what every 16 year old kid does on a Friday night. I'm recording butter noises. With Jell-O. G'night.