2016
Year
03:57 Min.
Runtime
16:9
Format
15 fps
FPS (frames per second)
Synopsis
Santa Claus and his elves prepare themselves for Christmas Eve. But not everything goes as smoothly as they expected.
Film Facts
The LEGO set “Santa’s Workshop” inspired us to make this Christmas movie. The rest of the sets were built by us.
We produced this movie in a record time of 3,5 months. After the first GONE CAMPING episode, which was finished in August, we logically wanted to finish this animated film before Christmas in the same year. This led to some stress, because besides the animation we also had to do a lot of visual effects and our own music.
The most elaborate scene was the departure of Santa Claus with his sleigh. This composition consists of at least 30 different layers of which four are stop motion animations (the sleigh, two different groups of elves each and the background). The rest are effects, backgrounds, After Effects cameras and snow mountains. The elves in the foreground consist of two different groups of animations, which we copied, mirrored and rearranged to get the mass right.
Fun Facts
The idea to make a Christmas movie was a kind of challenge. At a Christmas party of my family, the LEGO set “Santa’s Workshop” was standing around as a decoration. Somebody dropped the line “Why don’t you use this to make a movie sometime?” (something we hear more often these days) and we accepted the challenge.
The sign that says “Santa’s Workshop” is upside down. The set was originally built by kids (thanks to Vinz and Malin) and was not intended to be used in a movie which is why nobody bothered to make it right. We thought that this would give it its own charme.
When Santa is seen with the elves, he is always standing on a pedestal or closer to the camera to give the impression that he is much taller than the elves.
The book Santa is reading is called “Making Christmas” like the movie and has the subtitle “The essential guide”. This was added in post-production.
Many ideas are based on the stop motion movie “The Nightmare before Christmas” like the title (a song in the movie) or the gift chain of the elves (which also exists in “Nightmare”).
