Picture Credit: LEGO
After establishing a wide range of worlds through animation, LEGO has finally found a way to bring the brand into live action. The presence of the brand on screen has been a mainstay since 2014’s The LEGO Movie, with LEGO animation becoming a genre within itself, spurring the creativity of online creators and legendary music producers alike. With LEGO Friends Heartlake the Musical, the company is looking to bring another way of TV production into the mainstream.
Following Daisy, a girl struggling with the real world before being transported into the LEGO creation of Heartlake City, the show uses real-time rendering to achieve its surreal backgrounds that its live-action actors will walk through and interact with. We caught up with showrunners Michael McKenna and Hanah Draper to discuss how they used the technology to bring the iconic LEGO look into a new medium.
How did you both get involved with the project?
McKenna: LEGO approached Final Pixel looking for a partner that could realise the possibility of creating The LEGO Group’s first ever live action; they required an entertainment studio who could carry the whole production from story creation and pioneering filmmaking technology through to delivery. Having seen the work Final Pixel was doing with Live Animation, including real-time virtual production, Robert (from LEGO) recognised an opportunity to bring his vision of a live-action LEGO Friends musical to life in an entirely new way. By creating a live-action film that captured the spirit of the animated series and the character of Heartlake City, he was building on what he had been producing for the brand for years. Final Pixel then brought on the legend that is Kenny Ortega to help make our show into a musical spectacular.
Audiences have a very clear idea of what LEGO looks like on screen, was it a challenge to stay true to that in live action?
Draper: The process was a dream—we could build and rebuild, shape and craft, evolve and design all in tandem with LEGO. Where it got more challenging was the process of then taking our digital designs and carving out what was real foreground that we constructed and what we represented virtually—but we blended these world elements together so you can’t notice! We perfected the scale and colour palette, ensuring the brand’s world stayed consistently authentic. We were then able to flex creatively with how we used costume and HMU to bring our characters to life.
Picture Credit: Instagram
How did you decide on the real-time rendering technique and what are its benefits?
McKenna: We have been using this approach for 6 years and pioneered capturing real-time brand worlds in camera, which feeds into our overall filmmaking approach of real-time Live Animation—hence the name Final Pixel, meaning we capture final pixels on set. We were confident that we could realise the vision from LEGO within the budget available, but this was only possible using this medium and leveraging our expertise.
Unreal Engine has improved significantly in this time to continue to provide higher and higher quality fidelity. We were also able to expedite the process by using LEGO 3D models of the actual sets, which the team could then expand and design with to make it a place that real humans could live in. Scale became the big factor in every discussion, as we knew in order to pull this off, the scale had to make sense for the audience.
Audiences may be familiar with The Volume, which shares some DNA with this. What are the key differences between The Volume and the technique you used?
Draper: Our approach is using a way of filmmaking we have pioneered called Live Animation, an approach unique to Final Pixel. We put real people in a real-time animated world. We shape the story to take advantage of the medium, and approach this holistically across every department. Bespoke designed real-time assets are applied across the whole pipeline, in the story development and concept phase, to pre-film sequencing, Creative Collective approved designed story worlds, iteration of story with real-time tools, through to real actors filmed in an animated world using a sophisticated pipeline of final pixel real-time virtual production captured in camera, with real-time animations. We then take the same assets into the post pipeline, including rendering Unreal Engine sequenced transitions to fluidly assemble the film together.
Filming an entire drama this way means an incredibly detailed focus on schedule and preparation, as we need to re-orientate the wall angle and shooting position regularly in order to achieve desired storyboarded shots. Adding to this cast availability, lighting, and art department lead times (we were literally making props right up to the wire) creates a real recipe for a shoot that needs military timing and Formula 1 pit-team teamwork to achieve.
Picture Credit: Netflix
What effect does real-time rendering have on the acting performances?
McKenna: Our actors and whole creative team can fully immerse themselves in our world, which allows for richer performance as they can see where they are—the polar opposite of green screen.
What are the main problems that are still to be solved with the technology for productions going forward?
Draper: Knowledge and skill set of crew—but we’re working on that; we have a training arm, Final Pixel Academy, that operates as a talent pipeline for us.