In 2011 I was traveling and a friend asked me to buy a lego for her son. I used to play a lot with lego when I was a kid, and as I was purchasing the lego for this kid, I decided to buy a lego for myself. Since then I have become one of these grownups who builds legos: big fan of the Lego Creator line, and during that first year I started playing around with Lego Stop-motion animations, something I would also have loved to play with as a child.
I am not an expert, and often try new things. But I greatly enjoy the many hours of building, patient filming, and then putting the film together. In 2011 I started with a Christmas movie, and ever since then I have tried to make a movie every year, so here is a review of all my Christmas movies since 2011:
- Merry Christmas from Erik (2011): Set to the Danish Christmas song "Let Love be Love", by Remee, it was one of my first attempts at a Lego-Christmas movie, and therefore, when I watch it today, I see many naive mistakes and a bit too long video. But it also has some good ideas I have since developed, and is generally a very cute video. Note that I was living in Venezuela when I made it, and I put a little celebration to Venezuela in there.
- Merry Christmas Baby (2012): A friend of mine gave a great compliment to this film: "it is very well cut"; and indeed, this is the first video where I started experimenting with the cutting of the scenes into the setting of the song "Merry Christmas Baby", by Chuck Berry. Despite some technical faults I was very happy about this video, and it remains one of my favourites.
- Christmas in Jail (2013): The first video I prepared in Liberia was also relatively simple, but I worked a lot in the parts to simulate driving, which came out well in an otherwise bit boring video where I did not try much new. It is set to the Youngsters' "Christmas in Jail" song, which may be depressing, but also with some humour that I wanted to have in the video.
- Santa Baby (2014): I remember this video for the year 2014, when I was partly evacuated September-October from Liberia due to Ebola, and then was only back for a few weeks. So amid a lot of work, I also had very little time to prepare a video, and it shows in a video where I used a lot of clips (used and discarded) from 2012, and made a few new shots that did not turn out well. It is set to a great version of "Santa Baby" by Macy Gray, but otherwise reminds me of that challenging year and is not very good.
- Merry Christmas (2015): I remember that this year I focused more on the story; I wanted to do something fun and unexpected, and I think it worked quite well. Set to Martina McBride's "Please Come Home for Christmas", it is about a Christmas zombie apocalypse, where the zombies celebrate Christmas as well. While I had learnt a lot by this time, there are still some mistakes that annoy me. This is perhaps the most commented video I ever made.
- Mama Kissing Santa Claus (2016): I had a great song I wanted to do something with; Amy Winehouse's cover of "I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus", and I prepared a video with vampires, where I also wanted to focus on the story. That said, it was a disappointing video, and I am still not happy with it whenever I see it. The story is stiff and lacks personality. It is a great song though!
- No Video (2017): In 2017 I moved from Liberia to El Salvador. It was at the end of the year, and my legos had not arrived by Christmas, so I made no movie. To some friends I sent an old test-video I had made in 2011, set to Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas", but it is not very good in any way, except for a small comical thing at the end (I have since prepared a Christmas video that I keep in case I ever end up in a similar situation).
- Winter Wonderland (2018): I returned with new motivation in 2018, with a desire to do something really nice, with a story and try some new things. It worked well in a video set to Jason Mraz playing "Walking in a Winterland", I try to show an idyllic winter wonderland, only to end with all the snow having melted into a dry wasteland at the end. Climate Change?
- Blue Holiday (2019): This was and remains my most ambitious project, where I built the most and made most shots. It is set in a Star Wars universe, and starts with me having tried to recreate a scene in "The Empire Strikes Down", where Han Solo gets frozen into carbonite as Princess Leia tells him her love. The idea is that Princess Leia then sings Aretha Franklin's "Blue Christmas" as she misses Han Solo, flies the Millenium Falcon, performs at Mos Eisley Cantina, takes down the Empire at Hoth, and disturbs Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as they fight. It was perhaps too ambitious and I spent a lot of time on the recreation and flying Millenium Falcon, but I am generally still happy about it (except the end).
- Merry Little Christmas (2020): I did not feel very motivated to make a video for 2020. But I ended up with a cute little thing, perhaps with a careful optimism after such a messed up year. While it is short, I have inserted many little things that were purely spontaneous ideas, as I this year did not make a manuscript but just built what I felt and shot what I felt, and only after decided on a song (Daniela Andrade's cover of "Merry Little Christmas").
I have generally used iMovies, but in a couple of instances CyberLink power Director, and experimented with Moviemaker and Filmora, although the two latter were not very good, and I think only the former allow me good flexibility, although each has some advantages and disadvantages.
While I send my videos to friends as a little Christmas greeting (via private link) my videos (I have many more, not about Christmas) are not public and I have no interest in sharing. Like my drawings, writings or anything else, it is mediocre, and I do not do it for others; I do it exclusively for myself.
