About : standard furniture parisian
Title : standard furniture parisian
standard furniture parisian
mini figure: space. human kind has been gazing into its infinite vastness for millennia. here we are pushing the boundaries of our knowledge. venturing out into... what? what are lego mini figures doing out here? what the heck are toys doing in outer space? to answer that, first we have to start our story back on good ol' planet earth. here in the u.s.'s pacific northwest, a boy named thorin makes last-minute preparations on his battle scene.
in the netherlands, rosa is building a car in her living room. -oh!-mini figure: in shanghai, china, yuhang celebrates his birthday with a new lego set. and in denver, colorado, eben, like so many around the world, is sprawled on his living room floor playing with lego bricks. this is what we expect, right? after all, around half a billion people grew up with lego bricks. there are over 100 lego pieces for every person on the planet. but this story... but... can you hear me out there?
(grunting) ah! there. that's better. what? what's wrong? why are you lookingat me like that? oh, oh. there. how's that? now, i know. i know. you recognize me, right? featureless,yet functional hands. interchangeable hair.
perfect golden, uh, tan,i guess? but this story's not about me.well, not entirely. this story is about asimple toy that became, well, more than a toy. and how its unique propertiesushered in a newera of creativity. not just for kids. but for a whole generation. this is about morethan the brick. this is beyond the...no, hang on a second.
(clears throat) beyond the brick! a lego brickumentary! ooh, look at that, that's awesome. mini figure: at the annual toy fair in new york city, the world's toy manufacturers gather to show off what they hope will be the year's biggest products for kids. richard gottlieb: lego is, let's face it, undoubtedly the greatestsuccess storyof the toy industry.
laurie schacht: they have become the number two toy company with simply onecategory of toy,and that's construction. and that's up against giants. like mattel and hasbro. richard: mattel has hot wheels. they have barbie. hasbro has gi joe. and they've got other lines. and lego just has, lego.(chuckles) when other toy companieslook at lego, they look at themas a powerhouse.
when you look at afour billion dollar brand and that's going to continue to grow this year, it's amazing what they've done. it's become a monster brandof the toy business. mini figure: so how did the lego company become so huge? i can explain that,but i think i betterpark this thing first. recognize this baby? yeah, good ol' number 497. galaxy explorer.
it had these cool yellow tinted windows. all these 2x2 computer bricks. and, these things. it's just a small partof the lego brand'sfascinating history. let's take a momentfor a little primeron how the toy began. phew. oh, no, wait a second. there we go. much better. many people know denmark as the home of ready-to-assemble furniture.
sadly those people are wrong because that's sweden. denmark is home to hans christian andersen, delicious pastries and the birthplace of, you guessed it, lego bricks. back in 1916, a danish man by the name of ole kirk christiansen lived in the quaint little town of billund, denmark. a carpenter by trade, he started a small wood shop which, burned to the ground. not a great start. but ole would not be dissuaded.
so he built another one. in the new factory, he was inspired to build toys. by the 1930s, ole was known for his pull toys made from birch wood. trucks, trains and of course ducks. it was around this time that ole came up with the name lego. it comes from the danish phrase, leg godt, meaning play well. then the factory burned down again. but with ole's perseverance it was rebuilt again. this time mostly for making wooden toys.
until, a fateful day in 1947, when ole was visiting a toy fair he came across a new contraption, a plastic molding machine. ole brought the first one back to denmark, though not everyone was impressed. at first, ole used his hand-powered molding machine to make simple plastic toys. but then his son, godtfred, had a brilliant idea.
-(bell rings)-kjeld: i remember my father, for him, the system wasvery, very important, to turn the bricks intoa system of play. the brick in itself,is of course,a very simple structure. but with the number of bricks you have endless possibilities. the idea stuck and the lego system of play was born. and continues to this day. in fact, bricks made in 1955 still work with bricks you can buy today. the bricks were great for stacking,
but still had roomfor improvement. the christiansen solutionwas clutch power. what is clutch power? clutch power is the resultof the patented studsand tubes design that holds thebricks together. and allows them to... (sighs) ...come apart. then in 1960, the factory burned down again. -(fire truck siren)-(explosions)
(exclaims) what are they building these factories out of anyway? but ole went back to work and despite those pesky fires his company continued to grow. this magic formula of an ever-expanding system with its locking bricks made lego toys something that appealed to kids everywhere. what started as a danish endeavor became a global phenomenon. helping with this expansion of the company was oldest grandson, kjeld, who you met before.
you might recognize him from some of the earliest boxes. cute kid. personally, i feel kjeld'sgreatest contributionto lego history was his rolein the developmentof lego mini figures. or mini figs. hey guys, still no arms, huh? they obviously improvedon that design over the years. but what really catapultedthe companyinto greater success were the new theme sets.
like castle and space. and later, licensed themeslike star wars. hey! and harry potter. whoa, whoa. whoa! yikes! today the lego company makes more than 100,000 pieces a minute. and has become one of the biggest toy companies in the world. but not without first experiencing some serious challenges in having to redefine itself along the way.
but we'll get into that later. and just think, all thisfrom a humble carpenterin billund, denmark. oh! ooh, sorry. no clutch power, i guess. billund is still the heart of the lego company. and lego mini figures are still made here. handsome little devils, aren't they? okay, that shot kinda freaks me out. billund is also home to the lego design team.
here, inside the design room, the lego sets of tomorrow are being dreamed up today by designers. everybody i meet says, that i have one of thecoolest jobs in the world. it's fantastic to be ableto create with these bricks. we have our desks fullof lego all the time. it's like being a child for the rest of my life. mini figure: for many, the only limitation of building with lego bricks is your imagination.
but for the designers at the lego company, it's a much more regimented process. we're always workingwithin a system based onthese lego bricks here. there's not an infiniteamount of possibility. the constraints becomesthe challenge, if you will. then it's those constraints that are interesting to find how do we make it work. marta fernandez: you have to think about how kids play with legos which is something thatwe always have in our minds.
if you're five years old,it's a lot harder to build with smaller bricksthan it is foran eight-year-old. mini figure: at the core of the design process is one guiding principal. the design process reallystarts with an ideaof a story in a universe. we really take astarting point in whothese characters are, where they're living,what they're doing. philip: story provides context for what you're doing,it gives you andkids especially a meaning. it sort of helps to unlocktheir imagination in new ways.
we were just trying to puttogether color combinationswe haven't done before, yeah. mini figure: jamie berard is one of the company's design stars. he's the creative lead for the expert building series. today he's showing his boss his new parisian cafe model which will be revealed to the public soon. what i really hope to highlightat brickcon is the storytelling. for example, the gentleman onthe balcony has actually gota little bit of a surprise, and he's gotthis ring in his hand. that will help him hopefullymarry his girlfriend.
jamie: the job, it's amazing. i don't want to oversell itthat, you know, there's rivers ofchocolate milk and massages on tuesdays. you know, it's a job.but it's an amazing job. you almost wonder, like,how long can this last?is this for real? mini figure: another coveted job at the lego company is that of master builder. like the designers, master builders are, well,
masters at building with lego bricks. but they get to think outside the box. so as a master builderwe get to do everythingit takes to make our models, we design models,we do a pretty good mixture. we do everything from little tiny models, all the way up to human beings. it's always goingto be different. every model poses its own challenge. sometimes it's just the sheer size of the models.
ultimately,at the end of the day,it's really just pushing the bounds of whatyou can do with lego, being creativeand being artistic andall these amazing things. mini figure: today, the master builders are working on a huge project that'll be seen all over the world. the setting for the lego movie. the nicest thing aboutworking for lego is that we have all ofthe pieces we need. it's something that mostpeople would just dream of.
for this particular city,i got to sit down and order whatever i wanted. as far as the plotof the movie, i really don't knowa lot about it. um, there's a lot more than just this that's going to be in this movie, that we're all working on at the same time. and it's a monumental undertaking. mini figure: weeks later, their lego city arrives
and is reassembled by paul's team on a sound stage in los angeles. it serves as the setting for the live action sequences in will farrell's basement. -(bell rings) -cameraman: okay, clearing guys, please. director: action. bah! ah! phil: yeah, it's been kinda crazy. we've had, uh, we're shooting for five days of live action and the movie's mostly animated. and we've built thisridiculous lego modelback there.
-we built it ourselves.-personally, with ourbare hands. actually, we had a teamof super master builders. and it turned outpretty awesome. it's pretty ridiculous.(chuckles) these guys have been working on it in connecticut for, like, three months. and then, of course,like, the first thingwe do is go, okay, we're goingto smash all of this. christopher: so there's a city, there's sort of a castle world that we're calling middle zealand.
there's a pirate ship. some classic space stuff from '79. we heard we were gonnaget some free legoout of it at the end. yeah! i'm literally doing thisfor one classic space ship. hey, phil, have yourpeople call my people, we'll hook you up.maybe we can do lunch? (clears throat)so, this movie setis pretty impressive. but the master builders inthe czech republic are workingon even bigger things. (jaromir novak speaking)
so there,this is the interface. mini figure: working with jaromir on the secret build, is american project manager, dale chasse. okay, so we'll convertall this stuff frommillimeters to inches. i have the mostinteresting projecton my plate right now, than i've had in thewhole 21 years that i've been withthe lego company. we're secretlydesigning and building an x-wing fighter,life size.
(music playing) but what's really coolabout this project is we're copyingone of our sets that you can actuallybuy in store. it's actuallythe item number, 9493. and you can buildthis set at home. but what we've done is,we've built it 42 timesbigger than this. dale: the x-wing is 44 feet from wing tip to wing tip. it's 45 feet from bow to stern.
it's 11 feet tall. it weighs 44,000 pounds. and took 17,000 hoursto build. mini figure: finally, the x-wing model is ready to cross the atlantic, where its adventure will continue. but we'll get back to that later. (crowd cheering) ♪ i'm gonna pick up the pieces ♪ and build a lego house
♪ if things go wrong we can knock it down ♪ ed sheeran: lego was definitely part of my childhood, it was, uh... me and my brother hada big box filledwith everything. um, just passed downfrom my parents. but it was more of the blocksrather than the sets. and any time we'd get a set,it would be likeone of the small ones. and you'd always look atthe big kits in the shops andbe like, "oh, i want that." and as soon asi came into money, i was like, what should i buy? house? nah.car? nah. lego.
my album went gold here, in a week and i wanted a way to celebrate. the first thing that i bought,was the death star. the main thing that it does is it, it brings out a bit of your childhood. which is importantnot to forget as well. you know, it's good notto take life too seriously. trey: growing up, legos was more like this to me. it was more, you know, the bin of chaos. i was like, oh, no, who would,why would you get legos to be told howto put them together.
like, i always thoughtit was a very creative thing. and then i, i think i rediscovered legos right around the second or third season of south park. people would walk in while chaos was going on, and i'd just be puttingtogether these things. and i think that having thatinstruction book that said, this one on top of that one.and this one on that one. it was just so therapeutic for me because the restof my life was,
think of something,think of something,think of something. you know, be creative, be creative, be creative. and i found it soinsanely therapeutic. (whistle blows) i've actually been onthe road to a lot ofdifferent games. and the fans are like,"man, i love legosjust like you, man." i have at least 30 boxes that are waiting at home for me to start working on. the biggest piece that i haveis actually the piece that was given to meby ellen degeneres.
we told our friends at legos,that you love legos. -mmm-hmm.-so we got you something. oh! mini figure: wait a second. did any of those guyslook like kids to you? it seems like lego fanscome in many forms. let's go meetsome of these, um, well, i'm not surewhat you call them. let's go find out.
hey! can somebody justthrow my hair back up here? mini figure: here at brickcon in seattle you can see part of the huge community that's building with lego bricks. brickcon is one of north america's top lego conventions, along with chicago's brickworld and virginia's brickfair. and there are similar fan events throughout europe, asia, and around the globe. spending a little time at one of these conventions gives you an idea of the vastness
of the lego universe. brian: there are those that use lego. and there is anadult fan community. we all refer to ourselvesas afol's, absolutely. an adult fan of lego. which is basically,the reason we're all here. to me, being one is justenjoying everything aboutwhat lego's about. you know the comic book guyfrom the simpsons? that's i think what peoplethink an afol is.
just the big guy livingin his parents' basement. just kinda tapping at thecomputer all day long. mini figure: well, if that's not an afol, what is? blue collar, white collar.programmers,construction guys. school teachers. executives.people working inscience and industry. geeks, strangers, weirdoes.people like me. i am totally a geek. cody: for me, this is the class reunion with all your best friends, once a year. todd: afol's are definitely a community.
very much so.and thank you, internet, for making that happen. william: it was a kind of a light bulb, when i go on the internet, and i'm like, "wow, there's other peoplethat like doing this." joseph: the lego community does have its own language. and it is defined bythe acronyms that it uses. an afol is anadult fan of lego. as opposed to kfol,which is kid fan of lego.
tfol, which isteen fans of legos. some people use the term nlso, which stands fornon lego significant other. moc. which means,my own creation. a lug is a lego user group. ltc. lego train club. gbc. great ball contraption. snot would bestuds not on top. there's poop.parts out of other parts.
crapp is acrummy ramp and pit plate. burp. big ugly rock piece. and the infamous, lurp.the little ugly rock piece. mini figure: they even have their own currency. it's a black, 1x2 brick. you can buy these forthree, four cents apiece. but this pieceproduced in white, the last time they made itwas the mid '80s. just like a stock marketwould be, you know,supply and demand.
and you wanna go buy it,you're gonna spend$4 or $5 for it. mini figure: so what does the lego company make of all of this? we were kind of shocked. this is all based on what they want to do. it's things they want to make. it's events theywant to organize. we hadn't planned that. it's out of our control.
done! two, one, start. there it is. i found it. no, no. that's not it. no, it's definitely it. mini figure: a familiar face at many conventions is lego designer jamie berard. remember him? jamie's lego career started as an afol.
i was just at a toy store, and i see all these adultsin the lego aisle. and i'm thinking,this is a bit odd. 'cause i'm used to normallywaiting until the kids leave and then i can come over andtake a quick peek and pretendi'm shopping for someone. and sure enough,these guys are hanging outand they're talking and they're showing off thesets and they're buyingfive copies of a set. and i'm like, i do that!what do you...who are you guys? and they said, "yeah, we have a club. would you like to join?"
and so it was actually this really cool moment where i... i didn't even know it was there and then it kind of found me. mini figure: jamie's life changed when kjeld kristiansen and other lego executives visited a convention and happened to see his work. all these lego peoplethat i never imaginedi'd ever meet were all in one placeat one time. and saw all the stuff i was building and started having a conversation with me. asking curious questions like,
"have you ever thought of working overseas?" and then he hands mehis business card. and says, "i'd liketo continue this conversationwhen i get back to denmark." and then, he did,and i got an internshipand then i got the job. i think it's awesomewhen i go to the lego events. because, in many wayssome thingshaven't changed at all. i still have that curiosity,i just can't wait to seewhat everybody's built. to see the old faces, people that i've hung out with. it's just fun, people seem genuinely happy to see me.
and i love the factthat i still feel likei'm part of the community. iain heath: i'm a complete afol. i hate the term,because, like... trekkies and whoviansget these cool handles. we have to use an acronym. i build characters from the big screen and the small screen, from video games and from internet culture and memes. the first one was my stephen hawking model. which unexpectedly went viral. (chuckles)
and that's when i realizedthere was a larger audiencefor lego creations. i'm most looking forward to connecting with all my lego buddies again. uh, we get to see all the new things that we've created. it's putting on a show. and for a nerd like me, it's not often you geta chance to put on a show. so, did you figure outwhat you're bringingto brickcon? yeah, i thinki'm going to bring thehaunted doll house.
ah. we were bothinto lego as kids. we didn't realize itwhen we started dating. and when we got married and moved into the house, dave's mom called and said, "come get your stuff." in that stuff, we found a huge tub of lego. we sat down one evening and started building. so, yeah, we did thatand found out it was a lotof fun to build together. -yeah.-and we really enjoyed it.
dave: i tend to build a lot of steampunk creations. i just like the elegance of steampunk. stacy: i tend to focus more on the small details and interiors. dave: you're also really big on mini figs. yes. i do like mini figs. (chuckles) dave: well, obviouslywe're gonna haveto take the car down. dave: the big joke at lego conventions is the 1x5. stacy: mmm-hmm. and uh, for those of you thatdon't know what a 1x5 is... that is a guy code in the lego community for a hot girl.
and, it's because lego doesn't make a 1x5. and years ago hot girls at lego conventions were a total rarity. but, you know, luckilyi have my 1x5,so i'm, i'm all good. my definition of adultsthat play with legosare just tall kids. (boy imitating airplane) (giggles) i like to build,but i'm not the best builder. do you wanna knowwho the best builder is? my mom.
i'm finishing up just thelast few of the birch treeshere behind the library. and, uh... it's in the middleof rivendell. and we're really excitedabout finishing it, but we're also a little bitsurprised at how bigit turned out to be. you never quite knowwhen you're working on onesection at a time, until you put it all together. i just started building again a couple years ago when my son was getting interested in building.
-let's make it onlytwo segments long.-why? because we don't wantit to be too wide, 'cause it's upnext to rocks. alice: i went from doing laundry one day to having over two and a half million hits on my flickr pages. and it was pretty overwhelming. mini figure: for two years in a row, alice's work has received the coveted people's choice award from convention goers. this year she's built an enormous model of rivendell.
the mythic city from the lord of the rings. alice: i think people are going to like it. i don't think that there'sanything quite like it. one of my favorite things to do in a convention is to encourage the girls to build. lego has historically really been focused on boys. and they have admitted they have only been addressing half the population. they are now taking it seriously, because i think there's
a tremendous world of possibilities that has been untapped so far. there are lots of girlswho come up and say, "thank you for being a role model." raise the drawbridge! load the "cattle-pults"! release the hounds! oh! hi, guys. as you can see,people build all sorts of thingsout of lego bricks.
the combinationspeople come up with,it's almost infinite. wait a minute, i wonderif it is infinite. hey! mini figure: turns out there's a guy in denmark trying to figure that out. i'm going to talk aboutthings that we know about the growth of the numberof lego configurations. soren: my name is soren eilers. i'm a professor of mathematics. it all started inlego land actually. it was one of those rainy days in danish summer,
and i was there with my daughter. mini figure: soren saw a display dedicated to the original patent filed by ole's son, godtfred. godtfred was asked by the patent officer, "how many ways can you put together six of these bricks?" and he says, something like,"we're still working on it. "but when i left home, "we had 102,981,000" or something like that. and so i was wonderinghow they computed that number
because it seemed to be a difficult mathematical problem. what lego had donewas to just count the, the towers where youput the things on topof each other. whereas if i have a buildingthat is sort of low and wide, i have a lot of options for the final one. of course i tried to attackthis with theory, but i didn't get anywhere. so, essentially, all thati could think of doingwas ask a computer. in fact my programwas very inefficient,
took me a weekto compute this number. the correct number is quite a lot higher. the correct number is 915,103,765. mini figure: but once soren had the number, the obvious question was what happens if you add a seventh brick? or an eighth? so it's pretty easy to countall the way to five. six, i can now recompute this number maybe in five minutes or so. and then each time it takes about a hundred times more.
so, next time it's a couple of hours. counting eight it took me something like 500 hours. so if i was to count with nine or ten... this would probably take years, maybe hundreds of years. mini figure: so what does this unsolvable problem say about the lego system? soren: by mathematical definition, this is a finite system. we have a finite number of bricks. they have a finite number of studs and holes.
but for all practical human purposes, these bricks are infinitely flexible and not only that, they define a mathematical problem of infinite complexity. so i would say that, "yes, it is finite but in a way it's also infinite." jamie: i think this is the beginning of... what we call systematic creativity. the basic systemof tubes and studs,that locks together, and it will take a child'sidea or an adult's idea,
and it'll hold it together.it'll give it form and give them a new mediumof communication. the interesting thingwith the lego brick,as we see here, is that the instructionsfor how it fits with the restis actually embedded. we don't need an instruction,we don't need a dictionaryor grammar. it's embedded in the system. paal: it became this platform where people all over the world had a shared language, it's like the...letters or notes in music.
it's a creative tool. uh, it's a creative medium, uh, but it's also a language. it's a language,it's more global thanenglish and windows. (chuckles) mini figure: so with such a limitless product, how did the lego company experience anything but constant success? believe it or not, not that long ago, the company was in pretty dire straits.
on the cbs world widemarket watch, the danish toymaker, lego, today reported itsfirst ever annual loss. mini figure: if the kids love it, why then is the danish company in so much trouble? what happenedto lego, is lego hadan unprecedented growth rate when it reallygot the bricks right in '78, until the mid-1990s. it was growing fast,everything was goodand it suddenly collapsed.
so sales of their,two of their three bigproducts fall off a cliff. and they almostwent out of business in 2003. 10 years ago, uh, our company wasin serious trouble, uh, and the wonderful thingabout it, we couldn'tblame anybody else. mini figure: they had lost sight of their most important asset: the genius of the lego system. smart people fromaround the world had told legoin the '90s
that this brick is gonnabecome irrelevant. you need to find new things. it was seen as--actually, thiswas seen as uncool. mini figure: they were making more and more custom pieces for specific sets. at one point, they had over 14,000 unique elements. some of the sets had only a few elements and required almost no construction. when we made productswhich were quicker to build, those who didn't liketo build, still said, "well, i don't liketo build it,
"i'd rather buy a diecast caror doll or something else." and those who actually didlike lego for what it is, they said, "what is this now?" and because we didn'tunderstand that andalso because we were actually, frankly quitearrogant as a companytowards our customers, we were makingthe wrong products, and we were not evenable to deliver the products that people wantedto the stores. mini figure: their fans knew what was wrong,
but lego company executives weren't paying attention to the community that had grown around their product. the seed of change had been planted a few years earlier with the release of a product called mindstorms. announcer: this little yellow brick, developed by lego and mit, turns lego creations into interactive robots. for us this wasa great opportunity, 'cause we saw a greatpotential of combininglego and computers. lego had in mind thatthey would develop it,
and then kidswould play with itin the prescribed way, and they had asan audience, children. that's their standard,traditional audience. mitchel: but it really sort of captured the imagination of people of all ages. not just the young peoplethat mindstorms was initiallyintended for. in fact the first yearthat mindstorms came out, half of the saleswere to adults for adult use. then there was someonewho liked lego who was at stanfordand was like,
"hmm, this brick,i could hack that open "and reverse engineer it." and they were openingup the mindstorms. they were writingnew software for it. eric: within three months, a thousand hackers were working on it. and this was rather a shock for them. lego's response waspretty much like,"what is this?" they're, they're takingapart what we created. i mean, we put thistogether, so it shouldn'tbe taken apart.
that's like our secrets. there was a lot of questionsin our leadership. we could either take the aggressive and protectiveand controlling route, and the other routewould be to say well, this is, uh, interesting. in most companies,and also in a verytraditional way of innovatingwas to have it super-secret. it's like closed walls,sign nda, and wecouldn't say anything.
we had a lot ofinternal discussions with our lawyers,top management was involved. paal: kjeld had to stand up and say, "but i want this, "you know, we're a company who makes things that people can create with." eric: when a company starts to deal with users, and discovers that it can get ideas from users, that's mindstorms. that's the new way of saying, you will deal withyour adult fans of lego,
and you willget from them useful ideas. we need to be aware, that 99.99%of the smartest peoplein the world don't work for us. mini figure: in the wake of the mindstorms product release, the lego company was more open to ideas that came from outside the walls of its design room. chicago architect adam reed tucker builds skyscrapers out of lego bricks.
in 2005, when his firm went belly-up from the economy, adam decided to return to the more artistic side of architecture by creating architectural models. one day i ventured outto a local toy store and filled about a dozenshopping carts of lego sets to get reacquaintedwith the brick. and when i got home, i dumped out all these sets and my fiancã©e came home, and she saw me sitting there
and she made a u-turn.(chuckles) then an hour later,called me and said, "is there somethingi need to know?" mini figure: adam's work soon caught the attention of the lego company's paal smith-meyer. and i had this idea thatlet's start new businesswith people who have a passionate feeling about what we do. and then i meet adam and he's standing there with these super tall structures built out of lego.
and i'm like, "wow! these are amazing." we can do a whole line but me coming from the inside, i need evidence, you know,i need proof. so we can proveto the world that this works. two months later,i come to brickworldand adam says, "i have a surprise for you."(chuckles) and then he's created200 boxes of the first set. mini figure: on his own, adam had designed the box graphics and had packaged every single set.
if adam and paal could make the architecture series happen, it would take some convincing. after all, what adam was proposing to a toy company, wasn't exactly a toy, and up until now, lego designs were only made by lego designers. if he hadn't takenand been so pushy, lego architecture as it is today probably wouldn't happen. mini figure: the series was a success.
and the line has been expanding ever since. paal: so, it proved that we can work with individuals on the outside. it's not going to break lego. it's actually creating energy. it's creatingkind of this hope, uh, that we can makemore things. mini figure: adam is now working on a new venture to push the lego boundaries. adam: following up on what i did with the lego architecture,
i wanted to create a roller coaster for lego. i'm always about pushing the lines. mini figure: to make the roller coaster work, adam designed two new elements in his workshop. a ball joint attached to a rail tie. and a hitch to mount the ball in. the fact that they docreate new elements, um, gives me hope that,you know, that these elementscan also be created.
mini figure: 10 days later, adam unveils his coaster prototype for paal at brickworld. it's so smooth.it's amazing. whee! so, that's more of likeum, a sci-fi kind of use. this one is a runawaycoal mine. -paal: yeah.-or silver mine. yeah. this would not havebeen possible before. it might look likea roller coaster part,
but hey, you can use itfor anything you want. paal: i think it's amazing, i mean, i definitelythink that, you know, kids, adultsall over the world will want to playwith this. -everyone.-thanks, buddy. mini figure: in tokyo, japan, kohei nishiyama has helped open the doors to creativity from the lego community. he's an expert in crowd creation and calls his project cuusoo
which means dream or wish. kohei worked with paal to create a platform that brings lego users' dreams to reality. paal: the idea for lego cuusoo is that anyone in the world who has a lego idea can "wish" that lego will one day make this. the only thing you have to do is actually share it with the world on the cuusoo platform. and through that, create a community of interest around your wish. mini figure: designs that gain support from 10,000 or more lego users
go up for review with lego management. it's quite an honor for a design to get released as an official lego set. the first ideathat got 10,000 voteswas lego minecraft. took 48 hours. it broke our serversseveral times. mini figure: i think it's safe to say that lego fans were waiting for an idea like kohei's to come along. now the finalists are being reviewed for cuusoo set number five. if this is what it isto be a geek, i amdefinitely okay with that
'cause uh, it's the most funi've ever had. cuusoo loosely translated means a wish. and uh, my wish is to seemore space exploration. i want people to be more interested in space exploration. i knew even from elementary school that i wanted to be a, a mechanical engineer when i grew up. the trouble isthat there were no mechanical engineering classesin middle school. so uh, i would design entire manned missions
to jupiter, using lego designs. mini figure: after college, stephen landed his first engineering job, working on a space vehicle for nasa. the mars curiosity rover. stephen: 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 justwanted to build a rover,so i could, you know, showmy friends and familywhat 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 armthat swings acrossthe top of the rover and it connectsthe left and right sides
of the suspension system that allows the rover to keepall six wheels on the ground as it travels overuneven terrain. it doesn't have to be,you know, battlingmartians or anything, it's doing it allfor science. stephen: 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 candisconnect the umbilicaland 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 bea lego designer. "that's awesome."
man: looking at itand i voted for it, and there was only,like, a few hundred votes. and then within,like a week or two,i looked at it again... it started going upall of a sudden, i went, "wait a minute,"that's stephen's." -yeah.-this is cool. i know a little bitabout the other contestants. and one of themwould definitely bethe largest lego set that lego has ever producedif they actually didturn it into a set.
(hannes tscharner speaking) (hannes chuckles) mini figure: it's not just about prestige. if the finalists' designs are chosen, they'll get 1% of the net sales. (laughing) it will just keep goinground and round. mini figure: the third finalist in this year's cuusoo project is a user group led by new zealander, nick vas.
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 hada common love for legoand portal as a video game. mini figure: 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 projectis 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 onecould be chosen, too. i would definitely buymultiple copies of that set. man: so if the productgoes to design, what are you going to dowith all the money? stephen:if i could do whateveri wanted with it, i think it wouldprobably all goright back to lego. so basicallyyou're doing it for the brick. -yeah, pretty much.-(chuckles) (indistinct conversations)
paal: i think the interesting thing, and then maybethe scary thing with cuusoo is that it has actuallyopened the company, it has actually almostturned it inside out. what happened beforewith, you know, this, everything happened in secret,behind closed walls, is now reversed. it's created an excitementin the world that we can, together, shape the futureof lego products.
mini figure: 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? (crowd applauding) this is the next cuusoo model that you're gonna see. man: the winner... no matter how muchi fantasized about it,
it couldn't prepare mefor the realityof the actual news. i have all sorts ofemotions and feelingsrunning through me. it's hard to tryand describe howthey all feel when they're mushedtogether like that. mini figure: 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 mp40german machine gun from world war ii.my hcsr. mini figure: his business manufactures mini figures scaled guns. now, why would he do that? lego will not producewhat i produce.
lego won't do anyweapons that are modern. they'll do wild west, which is up to the mid-1800s. and then we got postmodern which is star wars. weapons don't fitinto the lego "play-well,"um, philosophy. will: 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 mini figure is, they have giant-giant hands. and they're a squashed-down representation of a human. they are 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 adultsand they will buy 100 of one gun,they'll buy 200 of a helmet. it's gone from justa 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, uh could be a worldwide phenomenon. the lego worldis so adaptable,it's so modular,
that lego doesn'tget to decide. we get to decide how we wantto build with those elements. -(gunshots)-(explosions) mini figure: cut! come on, guys, put some life into it.you're so stiff. okay, let's justtake five then. amateurs. all right, where was i...oh, right.
narrator guy! okay, the legosystem has proven it's a great thingfor play. but can it be used formore serious endeavors? there's peoplearound the worldusing lego as a tool as much as a toy.cut to... exterior, establishing shot, boise, idaho. jonathan vaughan: we're in my mom's garage, and we're making my film, melting point. it's a stop-motion animatedfilm made with lego bricks.
mini figure: 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 thatlegos were just for kids until i met jonathan and got a telescope into the lego brickfilming community. with brick filmsyou're uninhibited. if he needs a 12-milehighway to shoot a car chase,
he builds the 12-mile highway. whatever he thinks of, he builds it and he does it. to get somebody to walk, like five feet, you have to take 15 frames every second of that walk. so you have to move them in just little millimeter increments. jonathan: it's incredibly tedious. there's nothing else i've ever done that takes this long. matt cohen: but when you are working with mini figs,
you don't have to deal with agents or egos, or anythingthat befalls workingwith regular actors. they're great, i mean, if i want to do a 16-hour day, they don't complain.no overtime. jonathan's creating oneof his sets for his movie. they're doing the work in the garage. he tells me he's making a movie. i have to take that on faith.
he's playing with legos, something that he's donesince he was a toddler. jonathan: my family has been pretty supportive about this. lynn vaughn: he's very creative, but i would really liketo be able to park my car in the garage. yes. jonathan: well, there's been a long tradition of brick films. one of my favorite brick film makers is david pagano. mini figure: new york filmmaker david pagano
has been making brick films since he was nine. david is considered one of the top lego animators, and is known for creating complex characters out of bricks. most films,you're going to see, will have mini figuresas the main actor. they're just articulated enough to be moveable into a variety of fun poses. but not so overarticulated that they need help like getting themto stand up properly,
or look likea normal human being.or as normal as someone -with no nose looks.-hey! david pagano: i have done a lot of stuff with mini figures, both for lego and just for myself. but i also am just endlessly fascinated with what you can build from bricks. i just find it an interesting challenge as opposed to having a readymade actor. i'd rather figure out ways to make neat-looking characters,
and then make sure they're animate-able then bring them to life. i am somewhatof a lego archivist. on my better daysi consider myselfa lego animation historian, if such a job exists. i don't think it does,but i'll pretend to myself, until someonetells me to stop. so, the very first lego films were promotional videos or commercials that were made in the '60s and '70s. boy: i think it should have a big middle part
and two little sides that stick out. but the first fan filmdidn't come untilthe mid to late 1980s. and that was a filmcalled the magic portal. david: they used sloped pieces in a really interesting way where you could get these weird little globby creatures that crawl along the set. there's some nice animation with some of the old lego backhoe pieces. in the early 2000s, lego films really started to take off. everyone had the internet,and it was starting to become
this thing that wasnot going away,it wasn't a fad. and it was in everybody'shome as a way to connectwith other people. that's sort of when iwould say "the modern era"of lego animation started. david: the lego animation content that you can find online just runs the gamut. there's cool stuff, there's weird stuff. there's some stuff that's really well put together and just shot gorgeously and has really interesting parts usage. there's immensely inappropriate stuff. you can get all kinds.
(woman screaming) one thing that's become pretty common, is shot for shot remakesof scenes from famous films or film trailers. so they'll build each set that you see in each shot... describe what marsellus wallace looks like! -what? -say what again! david: i have seen the dark knight. man: (whispering) if you devote yourself to an ideal,
then you become something else entirely. ed sheeran has a music video that someone was commissioned to make into lego. ♪ i am going to pick up the pieces ♪ and build a lego house ♪ another thing that peopleare re-creating with lego is just like news events. some people were re-creating olympic scenes and when felix baumgartner did that jump from space,
there was like a lego version of it like 24 hours later. david: if you do a youtube search for lego, you're going to find 13 million hits at least. -(growling)-(gunshots) david: i think it will only get more prevalent and there will only be more and more people doing it because it's super fun. oh my gosh!i love this song! (song playing) david: the lego movie was done with computer graphics,
but made to look like a brick film. the director specifically said they were inspired by lego stop-motion web videos. and it's cool that they were able to include a few of those. in the climax of the lego movie, you can see my film garbage man. -whoa! awesome!-jonathan: it's technically not a brick film because it's computer generated. ours is going to be fully stop motion,
so i'm trying to make one that's the best quality for a reallylong running time. it will be the greatest legomovie ever made.otherwise, i've failed. matt: in the film, there's this cop, who all he ever wanted to do was be a cop. this little lego guy named tony. and he used to be a skateboarder, so he can chase criminals down on his skateboard. and then this guy duman, this great classic super villain
comes into town and just starts burning everything down. duman: right now, you are afraid, of melting. in a few seconds,you will feel the burn in your littleplastic eyeballs. was that the directionyou want to go? - yeah. i am digging that.-(clears throat) wow. jonathan: when i was originally working on the film, i wasn't planningto raise any money.
but then matt lookedat the script. i was like, how areyou going to do this? do you have enough, doyou have enough bricks? this is way biggerthan anything you'vedone that i've seen. and he said, "uh, well, we'll have to fillin the city probablywith some cgi, "maybe geta little bit more bricks." and i was like, "no. "you have to build a city.
"this has to bethe greatest lego movieever made, jonathan." and so i said, "okay, wehave to do a kickstarter." hi, i'm jonathan vaughn, and i'm directing melting point which is a stop motion, animated film made with lego bricks. i am robert fleet, i am playing duman. i get to melt things a lot.
it's really fun. -action.-so, guys, here's whati was thinking afterthe establishing shot. we're going to need to buildbasically everythingyou see here. so pretty muchthe entire city. mini figure: we're goingto have to use cgi then? i will not use cgi, okay? i want this to be thebest brick film ever made. david: lego started as a toy, but now it's definitely,
it's a way peopleare expressing themselves, in this weird hobby. so it's definitely also a tool and a means to an end, a means to tell stories, and express yourself in a gigantic variety of ways. mini figure: all around the world, people are pushing the limits of what they can do with the lego system. and what it's capable of, as a building material.
man: now, i can officially say, that with the height of 112 feet, 11 and three-quarters inches, you are now members of the guinness world records family. i'd like to present thiscertificate and congratulateall of you. yes! we broke the record. mini figure: in melbourne, steve sammartino and rual oaida built a working car almost entirely out of lego bricks.
steve: it's not going to set any land speed records, and it doesn't go all that far. but just the mere fact that it does go is quite something. mini figure: andrew carol, an engineer at apple, studied the remnants of a greek device, used to determine celestial events, which was found at the bottom of the aegean sea. then he reconstructed it from, you guessed it, lego bricks. at conventions, fans get together
to build great ball contraptions, or gbcs, which deliver balls from one module to another. man: the gbc is a collaborative effort to make a kinetic sculpture if you will. in this case, if you watch,when this ball hits, two flip off. and there're timed thatthis gate double flips. mini figure: even google's larry page used lego bricks.
actually, in college i built an inkjet printerout of legos. mini figure: page and sergey brin even built their first server out of lego bricks. in england, tv host james may decided to build an entire working house out of lego bricks. so, the lego system can enable people to make real, working stuff.
sometimes, however, the goal is more cerebral. woman: what doyou think that is? how great is that? you going to take a picturewith your cell phone? woman: well, i didn't see it at first, my sister pointed it out to me. and i am a pre-school teacherand i am drawn to legos. i'm from indiana, we don't seethings like that in indiana. so, it's unusual.
nathan sawaya: people are so familiar with lego bricks. almost everyone you know has snapped a few bricks together. and so that makes the art accessible, it makes it relatable. when i first started going to galleries and saying, "hey, i do lego art." they kind of looked at meand said, "oh okay, is that carsand trucks or castles?" you know, they havea set notion
of what lego art would be. i order tens of thousandsof bricks every month. this is how it is.this is how i get my bricks. in fact, i spend over sixfigures annually just on lego. there's probably3 million bricks in this room. i've made a career from a child's toy. i've been told at times i'm a sellout because i use this commercial brand to create my art. but it's a brand that i chose because i believe
there's nothing i can't build out of it. growing up, i had a lot of lego bricks as a toy. it was something my parents encouraged. they let me have a 36-square-foot lego city in our living room. it was when i wasabout 10 years old, wanted to get a dog. asked my parents,"can i get a dog?" "no, you're notgetting a dog."
i tore down my lego city, used those bricksto create my ownlife-size lego dog. it was really my first timein realizing it's not what'son the front of the box. you can actually createwhatever you wantout of this toy. i got out of college, and i had societal pressures to get a real job. and i ended up going to law school. i was doing corporate law. and i would come homeat the end of the day
and i would needa creative outlet. and sometimesthat was drawing,sometimes it was painting. but once i started doing sculptures out of lego, i really had found my passion. and it got to the point where i was working full days at the law firm, and i would come home at night and have a slate of commissions to work on. and i decided to make that change, to leave the law practice behind, and go be an artist. an artist who plays with toys.
you know, i don't know if this is... if i've broken through. i don't know if an artist ever can feel like they've broken through because i keep setting bigger and bigger goals. mini figure: nathan has been offered his biggest opportunity yet. he's been booked for a one man show in new york's times square and is prepping over 100 pieces for it. nathan: the new york exhibition, i think,
will be the biggest show of my life, a culmination of a year's worth of work, as well as the largest solo lego art exhibition ever. and there's a lot of pressure. mini figure: the show will feature nathan's original creations as well as lego replicas he is making of classical works of art. for nathan, this is the opportunity
to prove himself as a legitimate artist. nathan: i'm worried that the venue that's taking a big risk on me, feels like this is a failure. i am worried that,you know, will they actuallyget it when they see itin the exhibition format. and really, what'sthe public going to think? mini figure: thousands of miles away in germany, another artist, jan vormann,
has taken lego arts to the streets. jan: i really like to work with objects that everybody has a preconceived image of. the good thing with playful elements in the work is that people get attracted by it, rather than repulsed. if i use a materialwhich people like, they are more likely to start interacting with me. so now it has different aspects to it. on the one side the sculpture installation where it's just there
to be visually perceived. and on the other side performance kind of action. mini figure: it looks like a lot of fun, but jan's work has serious undertones. most of the timesi tried to find locations which have a kindof historical backgroundor political meaning. today we are here in the very back of the hauptbahnhof. this used to be the main train station for berlin. this is also a place where a lot of jews were deported before the war ended. the holocaust is an eventthat's omnipresentin my mind,
so i think about it a lot. you don't necessarily see it in my work, because i don't want to add like, visually dark and heavy subjects. so my idea to use the plastic construction bricks was to add a kind of colorful part of contemporary times, a material, that everybody worldwide has the same feeling on it. mini figure: some people call this type of art
lego bombing, but jan prefers to call it patchwork. and he is bringing the patchwork project around the world. jan: for me, it's a kind of hopeful thing, to see that we actually share this common culture. (straining) whoa... (chuckles) okay. what happens whenthe thing you want to build isn't the thing that youwant to build but rather a representation of the thingthat you want to build.
okay, i think i justconfused myself. what if the thing youwant to build is just an idea? could lego bricksbe used for that? mini figure: in denmark, when a rising architect wanted to submit for a major commission, he looked at how modular building techniques had become in his home country and thought of his favorite toy as a child. in denmark, becauseof the labor wages
and becauseof the bad weather, you want to minimize the timeat the construction site. so everything has to be like prefabricated elements, put together in interesting ways. so in a manner of speaking, denmark has become a country entirely built out of lego. so, we thought, like, if that's the truth, why don't we make this project an homage, so we nicknamed the project the lego towers
and thought the best way to communicate it would be to build it out of lego. and the idea became almost like doing manmade mountains that are pixilated, like a sort of, low resolution alpine architecture. to show the developer how easy it was to build the project, when we presented the project, we also presented this lego model and sort of... if you can build it out of lego, it can't be that difficult, can it?
and sort of he... he passed the lego model onto his son. and we got the commission. mini figure: the project earned bjarke's group a lot of critical acclaim and helped put him on the international architecture map. so, when the lego company was looking for someone to design their lego house in billund, bjarke was the perfect choice.
bjarke: of course, we were incredibly excited to get the job. as all danes know, lego is a danish product. if big had been founded with a single purpose, it would be to be thearchitects of the lego house. mini figure: in cambridge, at mit, they're using lego elements to visualize more than just buildings, they're looking at how entire cities work. man: so, we are looking at a
lego model, that has been constructed to represent a square kilometer of kendall square. we're actually in thisbuilding right here,in the mit media lab, and overlaid on this, you're actually seeing a projection map of google streets. mini figure: the mit city science initiative is using lego elements to visualize wind patterns, heat maps, light studies and traffic flow. want to see what happens if this block gets more light? just pick that 10 story building up and move it.
man: it all kind of highlights the complexity of the organism that is the city. you know the city isn't justroads, it's not justaccess to sun, it's not just people moving, you know, within the transportation networks, it's all of these things, in the same place. and that's incredibly hard to see. it allows everyone, let's say,non-expert and expert alike to come togetheron a simple platform,you know,
that's inviting, to befor engagement, you know,in a meaningful conversation. mini figure: huh, wow. turns out lego bricks might solve our traffic problems. in the favelas of sao paulo, brazil, they've taken this visualization tool to the next level by using it to discuss ideas, abstract ideas about community and class. (marcos wesley speaking) mini figure: there's another way the lego system is being used as a tool
and perhaps the most profound of all. can a toy be therapeutic? at the yale school in cherry hill, new jersey, kids are interacting with each other, playing with lego bricks. what seems ordinary is actually quite extraordinary. this school is for kids with autism. and all these kids have significant neuro-developmental disabilities. they're part of a therapy developed two decades ago
by dr. dan legoff. and yeah, that's his real name. dan: i was looking for something else. i wasn't happy withthe outcomes i was gettingusing standard methods. and so i had, you know,different stationsin my playroom. one of them, um, was lego. and a lot ofthe kids, especially, socially anxious, inhibited,quiet, mildly autistickind of kids,
gravitated to the lego area. and it seemed like an anxiety-free zone. the ah-ha moment cameone day when i came outto the waiting room and two kidsthat i had been seeing,very similar personalities... they were both bringinglego's from hometo show me. uh, and they had met in thewaiting room, and they wereshowing each other. and their parentswere excited. you could tell,they were like, "whoa.look at that. you know, "they're communicating.they're interacting.this is cool."
mini figure: dr. legoff allowed the kids to play with lego toys but only if they build together. working in groups of three, one is the engineer, one is the parts supplier, and one is the builder. only by communicating can they get to a finished product. g.w. krauss: this is a good time to switch. anybody who hasn't donebuilding yet should take a turn now. it's coming along real nice.
dan: making them do a systematic thing in a social context is the trick. building legos is cool, butyou know what's even better,is to do it with my friends. it is so excitingto see this thing working. so i have one studentwho interacts with other kidsin the lego club much morejust in that one day, than he has interactedwith kids outside of lego clubfor the whole summer. -right.-so that's a pretty big deal. parents were saying,"oh, my kid loves goingto see dr. dan.
"and isn't that great?he finally has a therapythat he enjoys. "he seems to begetting better socially." but there was no data on it. mini figure: dr. legoff conducted a scientific study comparing the behavioral improvements from his therapy versus traditional therapy. now those kids did get better. um, but the lego kidsgot significantlybetter than they did. mini figure: one of the many kids who has benefitted from this kind of therapy is adrian pitt, of new york city.
adrian: legos are usually all about concentration. and i need to concentrateon something a bit more. it helps me, like, focus. why don't you take off... adina: adrian is... he's just a real nice kid who wants to make friendsand wants to play. he has speechand language delays. and he has been in speech and language therapy
since he was about three years old. the great thing about lego,and the reason that i love itfor him so much is there's no words. the instructions are the pictures. so if you can see, you know, you can followdirections and you cancomplete legos. some of these piecesneed to have measurements, so this one needs to beexactly seven millimeters. this is how we measure.
michael: adrian's very proud of what he built. there's a real senseof accomplishment oncehe's finished something, and that's a big deal for him. adrian: i'm having a bit of trouble attaching this part. and if i don't get it right,then it's not going to work. mini figure: in a secret location in long island, the components of the life-size x-wing model have arrived via freighter, from the czech republic. the x-wing must be fully assembled,
then broken up into five transportable pieces to be brought to new york city for its unveiling in times square. there isn't much time. dale: you can imagine this being a giant kids bedroom, and we've just opened up the box of bricks, and we've organized our parts and now we're assembling it, a lot like you would at home. except we're just doing iton a massive scale here. how is this project different from maybe the one that you build in your bedroom?
here we have heavy equipment for lifting 5,000-pound pieces and 8,000-pound pieces. and you probably don't have steel inside your models at home. adrian: all right,i think we got it now. adrian: it's cool. behold. the x-wingstar fighter. mini figure: with assembly complete, now comes the biggest challenge of all.
bringing a life-size x-wing into the busiest block in america without detection. today's wednesday.it might not be that bad. but we're going intothe heart of new york, so... dale: well our plan is to spend the whole night assembling it, putting it together. and at 6:00 am roll it backand hide it inside the box. mini figure: adrian's father is bringing him into mid-town manhattan for a special surprise. what's it say?
adrian: secret model. indestructible box. -(crowd cheering) -do we have any lego fans here? does anyone here want to know what's inside that box? -all: yes! -i can't hear you! i said, "do you want to know what's inside that box?" crowd: (cheering) yes! host: i want you guys to stretch your arms out all the way to harness the power of the force along with yoda to open up this box. ready? one... two... three...
(cheering) x-wing! host: this x-wing starfighter you see is the largest lego model that has ever been built. i'm talking over five million lego bricks. five million, three hundred,thirty five thousand,two hundred pieces, at 45,000 pounds. this is the coolest thingi've ever seen. adrian: three, two, one...
mini figure: also in new york, nathan sawaya is making last-minute preparations on his one man show, the art of the brick. it finally opens tonight. nathan: i am very nervous, but also very excited to see those folks walk through the door for the first time tonight. this is the art of the brick. this is my largest exhibition i've ever done.
and it just happens to be the largest solo lego art exhibition ever. i had a goal of taking lego into the contemporary art world. and to do so, it had to be done in a way where i was really putting myself and my soul into the work. you know, part of me wants to just be a fly on the wall and listen to people's reaction. and i'm going to try and do that as much as possible. so, um, we'll see what happens. there it is, thank you.
first impression,i just got blown away. i didn't expect to feelthis much inspiration. woman: amazing. i worked with lego when i was a kid. but i always built thingsoff the back of the packet, and i can't believe thatsomeone's actuallyturned around and turned it into somethingfrom their imagination. this is somethingthat is delightful and playful and it's somethingthat can really spark the imagination in children and adults.
nathan: we have had a few art critics walk through already and, of course, i'm nervous to see what they say, but i think it's almost a compliment just to have a serious art critic from some major newspapers in this country, walking through. they were not dismissing itjust as a toy display. it's not just a gimmick.this was art. nathan: what do you guys think?
-i think it's good.-yeah? did you make that? i did, i made all of these. nathan: this type of exhibition is going to draw in folks who have never been to an art museum before in their life. and they're comingbecause they havea familiarity with the toy. and if that opens them up to the art world for the first time, then i've done my job. mini figure: lego designer jamie berard is headed to brickcon in seattle
to unveil his new parisian cafe set. but while he's there,he's got another mission. these are our happy boxes.now we don't knowwhat's in this. mini figure: he's convinced his fellow designers to compete against the public in the master build contest. jamie: okay, teams.these are the same products that will be givento lego fans at brickconin seattle, washington. and what we wanna do is, we wanna actually participatemore in the event
by doing the challengethey'll be doing there, we'll be doing it here. wayne: welcome! okay, you notice there are only 25 stations. pick a teammate and go sit down. bas: i think it's going to be a lot of fun at the brickcon convention,because when you have a head to headwith designers,
of course you wantto beat them. all right,so what do we got here? -okay, that's cool. -what is our angle going to be? the reason that you can seewe have pig and cow heads, is because the themefor this year's brickcon -is pigs versus cows.-(chuckles) does everyonehave two pig headsand two cow heads? (snorting) are there any questions?
-yes.-it's one moc? it's one mocbut it can be how manybuildings you want. make up the story as muchas you want and thenhave a lot of fun with it. wayne: use all the pieces,use all the set,as much as you like. you'll have one and onehalf hours to build. are we ready? crowd: yeah! wayne: go! so, the idea behind thisis that they should befighting for something.
it's a battle or some typeof pigs versus cows. see, this is always like,you know, why does it alwayshave to be battles? maybe whoever wins,stays alive. -stays alive.-yeah. contestants, you now havefifty nine minutesand fifty one seconds left! pressure! oh, stress, i hatebuilding under stress. man: how are things going,what's your process here? you can build anythingwith anything.
right, right. so, come upwith a good story first, and then make the pieces dowhat you need them to do. -interesting.-build a story. this is the first timewe've heard someonetalking about story which i knowwas very importantin this contest. he's like a cyborg.so he's half cow, half robot. -yeah.-yes. -it's a cowborg.-oh, that's a good idea.
do i need bigger horns? -yeah, much more horny.-(chuckles) you pig.(chuckles) jamie: some of the stories at some point got really ridiculous and crazy. and yet, because wewere going to a fanevent it was kinda fun to let it almost progressa little bit further than wenormally would. it's a cow-ta-pault. dave, stacy,how's the competitiongoing so far? we have a lot of pieces,but i think we'reon the right track.
josh, why don't youtell us what you guysare working on? josh: we have a little house of ill-repute going on here. it's a cow club, but the pigs have come in. he's relieving himself in the bush right here. yeah, he's super-fast. he's turning round,round this guy. i'm expecting somepeople to look at themand go... really? (chuckles)this is the best you got? mini figure: the lego fans don't know they'll be competing against
lego designers, until jamie shows up. i just have to look at youranimal becausewe were trying to, uh, -to see how you did it.-(grunting) he's making us look bad.(chuckles) time's up! we finished. wayne: make sure your mocis arranged the way youwant it to be seen. step outside and come backin 10 minutes. -congratulations!-(applauding)
let's bring them in,let them know what's going on. wayne: you guys didsuch a great job, it was really hard to tell who was our champion. so, number 8, won't you standby your moc please? wayne: winner is, number 8. we basically split off.we each built a moc. so i built the pig mocand chris built the cow moc. so they're kinda likerock'em-sock'em robots?
judge: yeah i think what wereally liked about the moc, what made it really winwas the fact that not only did you use the smallpig and cow heads here, but you also constructedrobotic ones from scratch with the bricksyou were provided. jamie: the winner was,i definitely agree was reallya stand out. i knew we'd have toughcompetition, these aresome really amazing builders. i mean, i'd like to thinkthat we came in the top 28,which was pretty good. uh... (chuckles)
mini figure: shortly after the master build, jamie introduces the new parisian cafe set to much fanfare. mini figure: then participants gather in the main hall for the annual award ceremony. alice finch's rivendell build is being considered for the coveted people's choice award. host: the people's choice awards are those voted upon by the public. we counted all those up and we came up with winners of people's choice.
and the winner is... rivendell! alice: it's a pretty amazing feeling to have 10,000 people say that they like what you build. to have a woman win, is pretty unusual. to have the same person winthree years in a rowis unheard of. one of the fundamental ways we know about humans and our historyis by the thingsthat they build. maybe little plastic bricks are a modern adaptation of that.
but really it's about creating something. we are definitelyat the core of what is human is the capacity to build. in the big picture, life on earth has evolved through millennia by adapting to the surroundings. until the point where we invent tools, technology, we suddenly get the capacity to adapt our surroundings to life. so we now no longer have to suffice with a cave
we can find or a tree we can climb into. we can actually build our own cave. and we can build our own tree house. the moment where we really became human was the moment where we got this power. it's also a mindset somehow. it's believing that anything is possible if you have the right tools in front of you. sometimes we don't havean opportunityto just be free and
everything that wehave inside of us, we never have an opportunityto let it out. and we're always looking for something to, inspire us or to,just give us some joy. being able to takeyour dreams and takeyour thoughts and materializeinto something, it's just a wonderful gift and i think the lego brick has given that to the world. (tires screeching)
mini figure: in idaho, jonathan and matt are nearly finished editing their masterpiece, melting point. the x-wing has landed permanently in frankfurt, germany. in copenhagen, soren is still trying to figure out just how infinite the possibilities are. and in the czech republic, stephen's curiosity rover is finally rolling off the assembly line. oh wow, that's a lot ofrovers. awesome. man: that's reallynice-looking box art.
oh, yeah, that's the greatthing about cuusoo sets, they have the best boxes. stephen: oh, there i am.it's me.man: there you are. "it's my hope thatthis model encouragesthe public support "that is integral tothe continued developmentand exploration of outer space." yeah. mini figure: i'm gladstephen mentioned space. didn't we start thisfilm out there? i promisedwe'd explain that,
and seeing how this isthe end of the movie, now is the time. for that story we go to pasadena, california. and nasa's jet propulsion laboratories, or jpl for short. scott: as engineers and scientists are developing space craft ideas and missions, to go out and explore andlearn about the universe, we sometimes use legos tokinda put together a concept
and see if it makes sense. so there's a room hereat jpl called the left field. and it actuallyhas these toys,sort of a kid's dream. has big boxes of legos and scientists and engineers get together and actually construct something that looks a little bit like the space craft they want. announcer: lift off of the atlas 5 with juno on a trek to jupiter. scott: the juno project is a nasa mission
that was launched in august of 2011 to go to jupiter and we would use our instruments to learn about jupiter's formation and other solar systems around other stars. mini figure: but the lego system was not just a part of the design process. we're on board. nasa engineers have mounted three aluminum friends of mine to the hull of the juno spacecraft.
the three mini figures are modeled after galileo, the scientist, jupiter, the god, and the goddess, juno. they're attachedto the main deckof the spacecraft. they were made by the lego company. to nasa specifications of a special space craft grade aluminum. sometimes i imagine what are they seeing in their voyage. they're able to see this incredible view. in fact they're seeing the view we all want to see.
we're living vicariously through these lego mini figures. they represent humanity in many ways. almost everything in the universe is built from something else. some fundamental building block. like an atom or a molecule. and for me, lego represents one of those fundamental building blocks. and look how many things we've built from this simple toy. -action.-action.
both: cut! (phone ringing) -(phone ringing)-(gasps) release the hounds. now, was that...was this a joke? was this supposed to be funny?'cause i don't know if i... i certainly don't get this.who wrote this? (vocalizing)