AFOL is an Awful Acronym
I’ve never been a fan of the acronym AFOL (Adult Fan Of LEGO), it lacks the poetry of Whovian or Trekkie (though, apparently, those terms are similarly disliked), but it seems like we’re stuck with it. Next year it will be further canonized in “Brickumentary,” an upcoming feature-length documentary about LEGO. The latest ReBrick contest gives brickfilmers another opportunity to have an animation on the big screen.
(If you are scratching your head thinking, “Brickumentary? Didn’t I already see that, and wasn’t the name better?” — you are thinking of “Blocumentary” from 2010, and the sequel webseries. Jess Gibson and her team did an excellent job with these, so I highly recommend them. And since the official LEGO YouTube channel is a morass of bizarre playlists, I pulled them together in a playlist on the Set Bump channel.)
Back to the matter at hand, “Brickumentary” is a feature-length documentary about LEGO being made by Futuristic Films. (Perhaps they’ll take a cue from the other feature-length LEGO movie coming out next year and switch to a simpler title like “The LEGO Documentary”). We saw them filming at Brickworld Chicago 2013, so production is definitely underway.
The tie-in ReBrick contest challenges users to make a stop motion animation that explains what an AFOL is in under 2 minutes. The grand prize winner will potentially be used in the film and potentially be commissioned to create additional brickfilms for “Brickumentary” and definitely for sure gets a signed Sydney Opera House set. Perusing the official rules pulls up some other interesting details (my emphasis added for humorous and editorial effect):
- The video must be uploaded to YouTube (videos submitted from other sources, such as Vimeo or Flickr might not play on ReBrick and will inhibit voting)
- You must capture your film using these specifications: 1920 x 1080 H.264 MPEG @ 24fps (23.98)
- Entries with military vehicles or vehicles featuring weapons will not be eligible for the Challenge
- Entry movies should not show recognizable features of any person or any commercial product
- Entrants may not use LEGO Bricks in their Entries that can be clearly identified as part of a third party branded LEGO set… Entrants may not use Minifigures from these sets or any decorated pieces that would identify one of these properties if used in an original creation
- …all intellectual property rights to your Entry and any materials submitted by you are automatically awarded and completely transferred to LEGO
In line with our increasing concerns over the exploitative nature of the LEGO Tongal contests, we urge you to consider the possible costs and benefits before entering this contest. Getting officially commissioned to do a brickfilm is a pretty cool opportunity, but considering that you are essentially doing spec work to get that opportunity, it might not be worth it.