1349 LEGO Studios Steven Spielberg MovieMaker Set is a Studios set released in 2000. It includes 433 pieces, and is one of the only sets to include the director, a minifigure similar to Steven Spielberg. The set contains a working video camera, Studios video editing software, 2 collapsible towers, two dinosaurs (Tyrannosaurus rex and Baby Tyrannosaurus rex), a cat, a mechanical dinosaur foot, a camera track with camera, a guide stalks, vehicle, mobile fan, two studio lights, two mini buildings, earthquake baseplates, ten flames, and seven minifigures. The road plates can split apart and reveal magma to simulate an earthquake. The mini dinosaur can be used to simulate the dinosaur toppling the two mini buildings, or as a baby dinosaur for a plot element. The camera is functional and track can tilt forwards and backwards, rotate side to side, and shift left and right for different angles. The dinosaur foot can be utilized for close-up shots. Included is software to edit video that is shot through the camera.
It includes various sound and video clips to place in the film, as well as a trio of sample short movies, which feature tips to improve movie effects. These can also be found in the director's handbook included with the set.Do not modify it. Create real movies of your favorite characters in action! First, build a cool movie set. The earthquake movie set comes with an awesome background, a breakaway road, scary dinosaur, and even a giant monster foot! Plug the special PC movie camera into your computer and film the action. Use the movie editing software to cut out scenes, create cool special effects and add sounds. Get an audience, grab some popcorn, and gather around the computer screen for the show. For a real world premiere, you can e-mail the film to your friends. Includes a big book of moviemaking tips, PC movie camera and movie editing software. All Steven Spielberg's proceeds are donated to Starbright Foundation and Shoah Foundation. Pentium 233 MMX or higher, 32 MB of RAM, 100 MB hard disk space (200 MB recommended for making a movie), DirectX compatible video card (800 x 600 VGA, 16 bit color and 4MB VRAM (8 MB recommended), Windows 98 and Millennium Edition (support for Windows XP is available upon request), Windows 98 compatible mouse, USB Port (USB 1.1 compliant), Sound Blaster 16 Windows compatible sound device
, 8x CD-ROM drive. Steven SpielbergCamera ManActressGripStunt-ManRes-Q firemanAssistant (Studios)Some (but not all) USB webcams will work on LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 running ev3dev. Fortunately, one of them is the camera from the LEGO Studios Steven Spielberg MovieMaker Set. The camera from the Vision Command set should have the same internals and work too, but the one I have looks like this. First, lets make sure it works. After booting up ev3dev and plugging in the camera, open an SSH terminal and run lsusb. It shows up as a Logitech webcam. Now lets see if we can take a picture. Here is a nice list of Linux webcam apps that I found. Many of these are available as Debian packages. I’m going to try fswebcam since it is a command line application. Some other command line programs are motion and uvccapture. Remember, always run apt-get update before apt-get anything else. Now, for that picture…Now, there is just one problem: this camera has a 5 meter cable – way too long for putting on a robot, so let’s make it shorter.
First, remove the two screws on the bottom of the camera. Most of the wires unplug, but there is one (the shield) that we will have to cut. Using a knife, remove the heat shrink by the strain relief. Then cut all of the wires at the strain relief. Finally, remove the strain relief itself. It may be difficult to break free, but it does come off. Cut the USB cable to the desired length. I made mine about 50cm. Be sure to replace the strain relief before stripping the wires. It will be much easier to put on that way. Use a knife to strip the outer part of the USB cable being careful not to knick the inner wires. Use heat shrink tubing to insulate the uninsulated wire. Twist the braided shielding into a wire too. Strip the ends of the wires on both cables and tin them with solder. I also used a bigger diameter heat shrink around the whole USB cable to keep things nice and neat. When connecting the wires, make sure to put heat shrink on first. Slide it out of the way so the heat from the soldering iron won’t shrink it.
I attached the wires one at a time and then shrank the tubing over the soldered part before moving on to the next wire. Just match the colors. There are red, black, white and green plus a copper uninsulated wire and the aluminum shielding. Once all the wires are reconnected, plug the connector back in. It’s always better to test before completely reassembling, so plug the USB cable into your EV3 or your computer and make sure the webcam still works. Once it is confirmed working, carefully cram the wires back in and replace the cover on the camera. Now you have an awesome LEGO camera to use with your EV3 without a ridiculous amount of cable getting in your way. The folks behind LeJOS have some articles on computer vision with the EV3. Most of the information should be applicable to ev3dev as well. Last school year I had a few students who were really into Legos. One student found Lego Movie Maker for his iPod. The App was quickly loaded up onto several other devices in the classroom.
My students couldn’t STOP making movies! Being the sort of teacher that I am, I asked them to show me the App. And yes, several girls got in on the App Frenzy too! I was amazed at the ease in which they created their stop animation videos. And to be quite honest, they weren’t half bad either. They created videos on various topics including recycling. The App: Lego Movie Maker (Free, iPod) has several features: Onion Skin — allows you to view where the last shot was taken Voice Over (under Record a New Sound) And a variety of other choices Once you have completed your movie you can upload to YouTube. One thing my students started doing was to further edit their movies in iMovie. The kids are brilliant! I love learning from my students. While the students didn’t fully use all that the App had to offer, they did get their message across. It was easy, fun, and everyone had a good time. That’s what learning is all about!Long before The Lego Movie was created, Lego nerds have been filming some amazing stop-motion projects.
One of the best is David Pagano, who with collaborators runs Paganomation, his animation studio. , the Wall Street Journal, as well as BrickJournal. I asked David what the brickfilm scene is all about: DP: Brickfilms are a way for Lego fans to tell their stories through the use of film and animation techniques. These films can be in any style, and about any topic, but they all have one thing in common — the use of Lego bricks and elements! JB: How long does it take to complete one of your projects, on average? DP: The work we do at Paganomation is very unique — we have to balance the infinite possibilities of Lego bricks, stop-motion, and our imaginations with real world limitations like schedules, deadlines, and gravity. For the majority of our minifigure-based projects, I try to allot a minimum of one month of production time per minute of screen time. That means if we’re making a film that’s 3 minutes long, it’s going to take at least 3 months to complete from start to finish.
That doesn’t even take into account the complexity of whatever it is we’re doing. Obviously, a 30-second scene of one guy standing around talking is not going to take as long to build or animate as a 30-second scene of a dozen characters flying around in robot spaceships, shooting lasers at each other as they explode. And don’t even get me started on timelines for large-scale films. My college thesis film, “Little Guys!”, used giant brick-built characters and took eight months to complete… and it’s only two and a half minutes long. JB: Say I want to get into brickfilms. What’s a great first step? DP: The best first step for getting into brickfilming is to grab some Lego bricks and start playing. This may sound simple and obvious, but the Lego worlds I created as a kid through play led me into the career I have today. All it took was that one moment of “hmm … I’ve built these cool creations, and I’m making up my own stories about them … What if I made a video of those stories to share with my friends?”
JB: Can you suggest some websites with information on the topic?There, you can find all sorts of films to watch, tutorials, resources, and forums filled with people who are ready and willing to answer your questions. I also co-curate a Lego animation blog called The Set Bump, along with David M. Pickett (of The Nightly News at Nine) and a variety of rotating guest bloggers. We cover Lego animation news, reviews, tools, tutorials, and so much more. JB: What goes into designing and filming a typical scene? DP: Before starting work on any given scene, we’ll already have a script and storyboards to reference in terms of what needs to happen story-wise. If time allows, I also like to put together mood boards, which are kind of like collages that help determine how the scene should feel in terms of color, layout, and tone. From there, it’s on to building. Every film we make here at Paganomation has its own unique challenges: if the film is being made for TLG [The Lego Group] and needs to highlight a specific product, we’ll generally design the scene in a way that showcases that product as prominently as possible.
Otherwise, if the film is for a different client (or an independent project), I’ll just try to build the coolest-looking thing that I can. Once everything’s built, we light the scene in a way that’s both visually satisfying and practical. Lighting Lego film sets can be tricky, since the plastic is super-shiny and one wrong light angle can cause weird reflections or flickering issues. We shoot test images to try and expose all those problem areas before animation begins.Stop-motion is a long, laborious process, and shots on our films can take anywhere from three to eight hours (or more) to shoot. Sometimes I animate by myself, but I try to have help from other people whenever possible. That way, I can focus on the sets and characters, and the other person can do what I call “driving”: handling the stop-motion software controls, checking the playback, and looking for set bumps or weird arcs in the animation. After all, it doesn’t matter what I see on set while animating — all that matters is what the final shot looks like on-screen.
JB: Tell us about your Kickstarter-funded project, “Little Guys … in Space!”In Space!” is a sequel to my aforementioned college thesis film, and has actually been in the works since 2011. I raised a bit of money for the film on Kickstarter in 2012, but because of the unpredictability of our commission workload, it’s only been in the past few months that actual animation on the film has begun. By hook or by crook, it will be released later this year. Whereas “Little Guys!” was my homage to/parody of ‘80s toy commercials, “Little Guys … In Space!” takes the next logical step for a (fake) toy line — moving things INTO SPACE to make them more awesome. It’s got lots of fun gags and neat builds. You can follow the progress of the film (and check out some behind-the-scenes photos) on our Kickstarter and Facebook pages.I need to get back to work! Want to see some of David’s work? Check out his picks of cool brickfilms he either collaborated on or just admires!