I love LEGOS

I love LEGOS

J. Rick Castaneda August 29, 2024

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Vibrant Penguin has been working with LEGO on their marketing for LEGO Ninjago Dragons Rising this year, and it's been incredible to see the YouTube shorts we edited really connect with fans and accumulate over 6 million organic views.

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I've loved LEGO ever since I was a kid, and in many ways the bricks symbolize the creative process to me.

LEGO bricks are a lot like crayons with a limited amount of resources, you can make anything. And the clips in an Adobe Premiere timeline really look like bricks to me bricks you can stack in a million different ways to create anything you want.

Like the Ninja warriors of Ninjago, our team executed a few tactical maneuvers that led this project to success.

1. EMPOWER THE WHOLE TEAM

One thing that we try to do on all projects, but did especially well on this project was to empower the whole team. Obviously LEGO had a ton of great ideas about what these videos could be as did I but some of the best ideas came from our editors, our assistant editors, and also our office manager. The world of Ninjago does an amazing job of satirizing real world social media, and we decided to do the same.

Some of these videos came in the format of an Instagram pet story, and others in the format of a Top 5 video (similar to WatchMOJO videos) and nobody may have told you this but the younger generation has a really good grasp of social media.

2. THE ART OF THE TRAILER

About 8 years ago, I learned a few crucial lessons about what makes a great trailer from an Emmy-winning promo editor at CBS (Brian, are you on this newsletter?), and how fast the mind is at reading visual information. We really learned how to compress information, build up momentum, and change up the pace in the middle of an edit by stopping on a dime. Quick edits spice up a trailer, but you also have to beware shots that are too complicated to be understood in a second or two.

3. WORSHIP EVERY STEP OF THE PROCESS

Every step in the process is an opportunity to add to the level of storytelling. Can you create a mini-montage to explain a character's backstory? How can you enhance a joke with sound design? Should you use a pre-existing music track, or can you create a funny remix just with editing?

One really interesting thing I learned on these videos was that the sound level of the end tag (when the fire sweeps across the logo) could not be set at the same volume level across all 19 videos, but really had to be set in relation to the sounds that were playing before it. So the end tag SFX after a quiet moment had to be lowered, or risk frightening the viewer, while the end tag SFX after an explosion had to be raised in order to be perceived as the same level.

This was the funnest LEGO project I've worked on since co-directing NINJAGO:Decoded back in 2017. That project, when we wrote and produced 10 episodes that aired on Cartoon Network, later amassed over 75 million views on YouTube, and it still remains as one my favorite projects I've ever worked on.

Last year LEGO unveiled their new Play is your Superpower campaign to encourage families to reprioritize play. To us, play is absolutely a superpower. Whether that means creating a game show for Red Bull, or directing a music video about a shadow demon chasing an Esports team, play is the base of our creativity. We had an absolute dynamite blast working on these videos, and I think that pleasure of play really added to the enjoyment and replayability of these videos for the audience. In fact I think it's crucial.

Keep constructing, keep creating, and keep on keepin' on.

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