A LEGO Brickumentary Page #6

working on a space vehicle for NASA,

the Mars Curiosity Rover.

I spent a lot of time in clean rooms

working around parts

of the actual rover itself.

It was all I could ever want to do.

It's a huge,

seven-foot-tall, 2,000-pound,

nuclear-powered, rock-drilling,

laser-blasting,

science-performing robot.

Originally I just wanted

to build a rover so I could,

you know, show my friends

and family what I was working on

and how cool it was before

anyone else even knew about it.

This is the off-set differential,

rocker bogey suspension system.

And on top here is the uh,

off-set differential arm

that swings across the top of the rover,

and it connects the left and right sides

of the suspension system

that allows the rover to keep

all six wheels on the ground

as it travels over uneven terrain.

It doesn't have to be, you know,

battling Martians or anything.

It's doing it all for science.

I'm not a very outgoing person,

and I didn't always, uh,

interact with a lot

of LEGO users before.

I just had my own personal collection.

And I like how you can disconnect

the umbilical and take the capsule off...

I went to my very first uh,

LEGO Users Group meeting,

called uh, a LUG.

And uh, the Curiosity Rover

was received very well.

Everyone thought it was awesome.

In fact they said, "Hey, you should

submit this model to Cuusoo."

And of course, the kid in me thought,

"Oh, wow, I could be a LEGO designer.

"That's awesome."

Looking at it and I voted for it,

and there was only,

like, a few hundred votes.

Then within a week I looked at it again.

It started going up

all of a sudden, I went,

"Wait a minute, that's Stephen's.

This is cool!"

I know a little bit

about the other contestants,

and one of them would definitely be

the largest LEGO set

that LEGO has ever produced

if they actually did turn it into a set.

Took me about nine months

to complete it.

It's not just building, of course.

It's research.

I had to find all the pictures

for the model and all the parts.

I wasn't sure until the end

if it's going to work

and drive because of the weight,

but I was lucky with that.

It's not just about prestige.

If the finalists' designs are chosen,

they'll get 1% of the net sales.

If I win, then I will build it

twice this size

and ride on it through the desert.

It will just keep going round and round.

The third finalist in

this year's Cuusoo project

is a user group led

by New Zealander Nick Vs.

Nick and his team have

created LEGO models

of the video game Portal 2,

which is very popular

with the LEGO crowd.

We had decided on Portal

as the topic for our Cuusoo project,

simply because we had

a common love for LEGO

and Portal as a video game.

The Portal Project was one

of the fastest ever to reach

the necessary 10,000 votes

to be considered

a finalist on the Cuusoo website.

We think that our project

is the most likely.

We're holding high hopes

that it will be us.

I voted for them, 'cause I played

the game, and I really enjoyed it.

And I was... I'm hoping

that one could be chosen, too.

I would definitely buy

multiple copies of that set.

So if the product goes to design, what

are you going to do with all the money?

If I could do whatever I wanted with it,

I think it would probably all go

right back to LEGO.

So basically you're doing it

for the brick.

Yeah, pretty much.

I think the interesting thing,

and then maybe

the scary thing with Cuusoo,

is that it has actually

opened the company,

it has actually almost

turned it inside out.

What happened before

with, you know, this,

everything happened in secret,

behind closed walls,

is now reversed.

It's created an excitement

in the world that we can,

together, shape the future

of LEGO products.

After months of review

LEGO representatives are ready to reveal

which of the three finalists will be

chosen as Cuusoo set number 005.

Are you guys excited?

This is the next Cuusoo model

that you're gonna see.

The winner...

the Mars Curiosity Rover.

No matter how much

I fantasized about it,

it couldn't prepare me

for the reality of the actual news.

I have all sorts of emotions

and feelings running through me.

It's hard to try

and describe how they all feel

when they're mushed together like that.

Innovation from the LEGO community

doesn't necessarily need to have

the LEGO company's involvement.

While the LEGO company

is more and more open

to innovators from the outside,

there are others who are

customizing on their own.

In Seattle, Washington, Will Chapman

has built a successful business

around a hole in the LEGO product line.

This is an M2 machine gun.

This is the MP40 German

machine gun from World War ll.

My HCSR.

His business manufactures

minifigure-scaled guns.

Now why would he do that?

LEGO will not produce what I produce.

LEGO won't do any weapons

that are modern.

They'll do Wild West,

which is maybe up to the mid-1800s.

And then we got postmodern,

which is Star Wars.

Weapons don't fit

into the LEGO "play well" philosophy.

I think being a Danish company,

the idea of handgun ownership,

weapon ownership

is not a big part of their culture.

So I said, "Let's try it ourselves."

When I design a weapon, I look online

for some inspirational photos.

The trouble with the minifigure

is they have giant... giant hands,

and they're a squashed-down

representation of a human.

They're really tough

to try to design for.

It's art.

It's truly, I believe it's art.

The folks that are

buying to equip an army

are always adults,

and they'll buy a hundred of one gun,

they'll buy 200 of a helmet.

It's gone from just a couple of figures

armed with a weapon,

to scenes, entire battles,

D-Day landing, Normandy Invasion.

There's invasions of Fallujah,

there's modern military Marines,

there's modern army.

You need an M16. It's an iconic weapon.

This started as a hobby,

and I never thought

that this would turn into something

that could be a worldwide phenomenon.

The LEGO world

is so adaptable, it's so modular,

that LEGO doesn't get to decide.

We get to decide how we want

to build with those elements.

Cut!

Come on, guys, put some life into it.

You're so stiff.

Okay, let's just take five then.

Amateurs.

All right, where was I... Oh, right.

Narrator guy!

Okay, the LEGO system has proven

it's a great thing for play,

but can it be used for

more serious endeavors?

There's people around the world

using LEGO as a tool

as much as a toy. Cut to:

Exterior Establishing shot.

Boise, Idaho.

We're in my mom's garage,

and we're making my film Melting Point.

It's a stop-motion animated

film made with LEGO bricks.

Jonathan Vaughan and Matt Cohen

met at film school in Los Angeles,

but they both dropped out

because they were frustrated

by the scale of projects they could do.

I used to think that LEGOs were

just for kids

until I met Jonathan

and got a telescope

into the LEGO brick filming community.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes