TTV Interviews BIONICLE Animation Writer Merlin P. Mann (With Transcript)
Greetings everybody! Today we’re bringing you an exclusive interview we had with the screenplay writer of the BIONICLE 2015 animations, Merlin P. Mann (Spoiler alert: He’s a really cool dude).
Due to the length of the interview we decided to split it up into two parts, the first part which is contained in this article will cover Mr. Mann’s introduction into writing, including some of his past work and experiences, what it’s like working with LEGO and general thoughts on the BIONICLE line, and then a brief discussion about the episodes, what it was like working on them, and a few comments on their odd release schedule.
He gave us some very thorough and in depth answers with quite a lot of insight so be sure to go through and have fun!
You can listen to our interview here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXXSh7FBAy4
Or you can continue down below to read the transcript version.
Meso: Hello everybody, and welcome to a very exciting event!
Today, we are going to be sitting down with the writer of the BIONICLE 2015
animations, Merlin Mann! How’s life and such, Mr. Mann?
Var: Introduce yourself, Merlin Mann, say hi.
Merlin: Thank you, thank you. Hi everybody! If I’m stuttering a
bit here, it’s just because it’s such a great honor to be here with you guys.
I’ve enjoyed following your podcast and, well, you know, I’m just a bit in awe
here, so bear with me, okay?
Meso: Well, thank you very much!
Var: You’re in awe?
Meso: We’re not really used to that; we’ve never interviewed
someone who has actually listened to our work.
Var: Yeah, that is actually pretty unique, I don’t think we’ve
ever done that before.
Merlin: Well, it’s great being here, and I’ve really been looking
forward to it even though, I know, I’m at risk! I know you guys, you know,
you’re not pulling any punches!
Meso: We’re critical people!
Kahi: Only Meso - let’s be fair here - only Meso’s that kind of guy!
Meso: It’s pretty much just me.
Eljay: C'mon, he has perfectly good reason to worry! We may
influence him with our misinformation spreads.
Meso: Oh yeah.
Merlin: Listen, let me just say this; if this is to have any value
to the listeners, then you just can’t pull any punches. We’re here for real, so
just… whatever you need to ask me, you can just go ahead.
Meso: Provided you’re not under NDA, of course.
Merlin: Exactly, and that is the one thing I have to say that, I’m
sorry, but there are some questions where I’m really boring and have to say
“Sorry, can’t tell that!” because, you know, I’m still under oath.
Meso: It’s alright, we know how that goes.
Eljay: We interviewed Greg Farshtey, we know exactly how that
goes.
Merlin: Anyhow, we don’t need to pretend or anything, and just ask
the questions that come natural and that you know your listeners want to have
answers so… go ahead.
Meso: Fair enough. Well, I think that a good place to start
wouldn’t be with BIONICLE, persay, but rather with you personally and how you
first got involved with writing. Care to tell us anything?
Merlin: Well yeah, I might as well admit from the start that I
wasn’t brought onto this because I know a whole lot about BIONICLE. I’ve been
around the guys, especially at Advance, the company that’s done a lot of the
story work and animation for BIONICLE and obviously, you and your listeners
should know, Christian Faber, who was very instrumental in shaping the old
universe. I’ve worked around him and Jan Kjaer, who you might know as well. He
was an art director, sort of the protege of Christian Faber for many years as
well. We did a book series together.
Merlin: So really, I’ve been hanging out with these guys, I’ve
been doing a bit of Lego work in the past which was more… concept work and
early story stuff, mostly for lines that never really happened but sort of…
morphed into other lines. I worked on a very, very early iteration of Ultra
Agents, which was just really called Agents at that time. I think that the
reason I was pulled in on this is because of my, though slim, screenwriting
skills or experiences. I went to the Danish National Film School, for
screenwriting, and they knew that I was a geek and that I knew how to
appreciate these things. The story team as such were already in place when I
got involved in this. I was pretty much the guy meant to shape things up so
they would work for people that aren’t necessarily total geeks about the
stories, and sort of… try to get the stories to work as simple stories. I
started writing about 15 years ago, and I actually started off writing for
Disney and Pixar.
Meso: Wow.
Merlin: That sounds like a pretty rough place to start, but it was
actually doing book versions of the… whenever the new movies came out.
Kahi: Right, right.
Merlin: I started out with Treasure Planet, made a book version of
that, did Finding Nemo, did Incredibles, did a whole bunch of those. It was
great fun, but it was never MY story or anything, just doing versions of movie
scripts and turning them into books instead. It’s done in Denmark, which is
kind of odd; I think the US versions are done in the US but the international
versions are done in Denmark and written in English, which was the primary
reason why I got the job 15 years ago, because I could write in English and I
knew one of the editors. Then, well, you know, I gave a few tests and they said
“You can come on board!” I worked for them for quite a while, but
well, obviously as any person with a writer’s heart would know, you probably know
a few of those, and ARE a few of those, you want to write your own stuff,
create your own universes, your own stories. I got involved in a computer game
project, we had a big hit with Hitman in Denmark at one point, Io Interactive
which was originally a Danish company. This was in the beginning of the 2000s,
and everybody at that time thought “This is the way to go,” nowadays,
before the crisis really hit and everything. So creating huge console game
titles, XXX titles - did I say that?
*laughter*
Merlin: I mean, Denmark has quite a reputation to begin with, and
I’m not really helping anything! AAA titles! That’s whats called a Freudian
Slip, isn’t it? Anyhow, we got into that. Me and, I think we were about… 12
guys that did a lot of funny stuff, most of us knew each other from role
playing games back in the days, and we figured “Hey, we’re going to do our
own console title! That’s the way to go!” I don’t know how, but we got a
lot of people onboard. One of the persons we got onboard was Jan, with whom I
worked together very well. We hit it off immediately; he used to play role
playing games back in the day as well, I’d do the stories, he’d do the art
direction and concept work, and it really worked!
Merlin: …Apart from the fact that making computer games is
really, really, really, tough. We ended up crashing after a few years, and it
was really frustrating; we’d spent millions of krones, not that much in
dollars but still, a lot of money. Luckily investors’ money, spending other
peoples’ money, that’s always fun! But still, I mean, we’d wasted two years
working on this project and it just crashed! It wasn’t even spectacular, it
wasn’t like this big crash, but just… a whimper. Like, that’s how the world
ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper. It was so frustrating. So Jan and I
decided… he’d had his experiences from working with Lego, he’d done a lot of
stuff with them alongside Christian Faber, especially, and also on his own.
What was the line… they had a sort of, Mecha line at some point.
Everyone: Exo Force?
Merlin: Yeah, Exo Force, exactly! Jan did most of the artwork on
that and it was really beautiful. So he was used to working with large concepts, and I was used to working with Disney and Pixar, so we knew how to be
professional about it, but we really missed having control. We thought this
computer game would be good, but nothing there. We ended up doing books
together instead; we did a series, which was sort of a hybrid between
manga-inspired comic books and a fantasy novel, which was intended for ages
8-12 - primarily boys - who didn’t want to bother with long books or novels or
stuff like that. They wanted something that was easily accessible but had that
epic feeling to it. It worked out really well, we ended up doing 16 books in
the series and a couple books in the universe, a spin off series, and we sold
about half a million copies in 13 different countries and that was really cool.
Kahi: What was the name of this series?
Merlin: Taynikma. It’s been translated to English but it never really
got a release in the UK, not even close in the US yet although; obviously,
there’s no need for US publishers to look abroad for all kinds of books and
series because they have plenty, so for Danish concepts if you really want to
bring it to the US market, you really have to have at least a UK version first,
so we tried. We haven’t really succeeded yet with that, but it’s still a going
thing.
Var: So you’re still working on it then?
Merlin: Yeah, we haven’t been putting out books for quite a while
now; it’s actually our 10th anniversary this year! We have been working on
trying to make animations and stuff like that, but… this long, long story
just to say that now, even though I can live from doing my own properties, my
own works, books, screenplays, and stuff like that… it’s still fun to be
involved with some of the old stuff, that you know is going to get out there
and hit millions of old fans.
Merlin: So getting offered to do this for Lego was just a total no
brainer, especially because they had me quote what price I wanted, and I really
tried to play cool but everybody knew I was going to say yes no matter what!
*laughter*
Merlin: I haven’t regretted it at all.
Meso: Well, that’s wonderful!
Var: That’s really cool.
Kahi: You know, I think… if you did write that Treasure Planet
book, I never saw that movie as a kid, but my library had a copy of that book
too. So I don’t know if you had a hand in the Danish translation of it or the
English version that got sent out.
Merlin: I wrote the English version, I actually wrote a couple
versions because they always did different kinds of versions, like the Readers’
Club thing, and the storybook thing, they had different formats. So I think I
wrote maybe like 4 or 5 versions of that book.
Meso: Well, that’s excellent.
Kahi: That’s probably my only interaction with that movie, so
that’s pretty cool.
Merlin: I have to say, it was a fun concept. The whole idea was to
do Treasure Island in space, which was pretty fun, but to be honest the story
didn’t work. It was far too complicated, and it had a really annoying comic
sidekick.
Meso: I never even saw that movie.
Merlin: Well, you didn’t really miss out on anything.
Meso: Aw!
Var: I remember trying to watch the movie but, as a kid, I really
didn’t like the art style too much so I couldn’t really get into it, but it
seemed like a cool concept.
Merlin: It was… it was at a time with Disney really where they
were kind of struggling to find original material. This is when Pixar was
really exploding and they were really taking things in different directions.
Disney had a lot of trouble when it came to deciding if they were going to keep
with the 2D animation style they’ve always done or if they were going to move
into the 3D style as Pixar had done. They put out a lot of junk.
Kahi: I remember, that’s partly the era that I kind of grew up in.
I remember the period where Disney did all this great stuff, and then Pixar
started doing all this great stuff, and then Disney was doing Home on the
Range, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and it was kind of like… they
weren’t horrible, but they were kind of missing that feel of Disney. They only
really came back, I feel, with like Tangled, Wreck it Ralph, Frozen…
Meso: Only recently have they had their renaissance.
Kahi: Yeah.
Merlin: I’ll have to agree because I LIVED through that. It was
the second era that I lived through. Luckily, I got to do both the Pixar and
Disney books. Actually, the last Disney book I got to do was for Meet the
Robinsons, which was a TERRIBLE script. It was actually based on quite a cool
childrens book, storybook sort of thing which was illustrated and had some
beautiful illustrations, but it was sort of a… very poetic kind of thing,
with nice drawings and stuff like that. They tried to shove that down into a
slapstick… it had nothing to do with each other, and it turned out really
bad. It was one of the worst books I’ve done for Disney, I really struggled
with that. That was sort of the nail in the coffin on that part of my career.
Var: You’ve really had a lot of involvement with many different
things, you’ve had a lot of experience!
Merlin: Yeah, I guess I was kinda lucky that I got involved in
some of these things. I mean, honestly my primary experience is being a full-on
fanboy. It’s been an odd career because I started out with role playing games,
with Dungeons and Dragons quite early in the 80s, which is right about when it
hit Denmark where I was at. So I was kind of a pioneer with that, and I was 17
years old (younger than that, actually), because I remember seeing some kids
playing Dungeons and Dragons and I was 11, 12 years old? I figured, this game
just blew my mind completely. It shook my world, shattered everything, and I
just had to have that game. But I was 11, and that game wasn’t even anything
that you could find in normal bookstores. I think there was only one shop in
Copenhagen that would have these kind of things, so you had to do your own.
Merlin: So I did my own, which I originally named Magic and Swords,
so this was just Sword and Scorcery flipped over! I was just 11 years old. So I
did my own role playing game, and that was just short of a geek magnet, so
within a very short time everyone in my hometown that was just slightly a geek,
just slightly into Star Wars, got attracted to this. So from a very early age,
I was part of this fanboy culture, which for picking up girls wasn’t that hot.
Var: I know that feel.
Eljay: Ouch!
Merlin: This is why we guys can talk to each other! We don’t know
each other, we haven’t been the same places probably, but we’ve all been part
of this same culture! And even though we might have our differences, some may
be into Star Trek, some may be into Star Wars, we may be very different, but in
a funny way, long before the internet and a long before what everyone would
call globalization, we were globalized! We were geeks, we were nerds, and this
was one of the first strong global cultures to rise! And today, 30 years down
the line, this actually means that a lot of people know each other in strange
ways. I mean, when I sat down with the guys on the BIONICLE story team, most of
them I didn’t know, I think I only knew one or two of them beforehand, but it
turned out obviously that at least half of us had played role playing games
when were young. So that meant that when we talked about the concepts we had a
common language for it! So it made things so easy, it made this whole feeling
of… you know, one big family, one big geek family.
Meso: It’s good to have common ground with things like that.
Eljay: So, you mentioned that we probably haven’t all been in the
same place. These three guys have, they’ve all met up, so you know what, let’s
meet up! That way we’ll all be on an even keel.
Meso: Let’s have the TTV convention! That’s never going to happen.
Kahi: What you’re saying is really true; we all live in a
different area of the United States, none of us even live in the same state, so
it’s a common ground. Us just getting this channel started is what has this
natural culture to it, so it’s great that the BIONICLE story team has had this
kind of experience as well.
Kahi: Did you guys, when you sat down with the story team
and thought “We’re going to revisit this line,” did you have any
direct inspiration? Did you think “Let’s have Skyrim meets
Transformers!” or you know that kind of thing?
*laughter*
Meso: I don’t think that’s the best analogy for BIONICLE.
Merlin: I think I understand the question. As I said, I got pulled
into this quite late in the process, and in a way, yeah I would have loved to
be in this from the very beginning, but on the other hand, I’ve done very early
concept work with Lego before and it was great! But it was also a pain to see
things die. So being pulled into something that you knew was about to happen
very shortly had its own appeal. I had a very focused job to do as a
screenwriter, so in a way, I was pulled in as a screenwriter and not so much as
a story developer. And yes, always, when you talk about stories you have to
have analogies, you have to have a language for it, you have to have metaphors.
One of the easiest things is to find that common ground, which is why everyone
talks about Star Wars all the time! It’s such a strong entity and it makes it
really easy to talk about, like “I want this guy to be the Han Solo
character.” So obviously, that had been part of the talk.
Merlin: At the time, when I got into it, the storyline was pretty
much already there. It was like… I had a synopsis for each episode, and from
there, it was all craftmanship really, on my part, trying to make them
exciting, of course, and give them a language, a feel. So I got to do that
pretty much on my own and the story development was done by the team
beforehand.
Var: I guess since you’re mentioning your involvement with the
story team, I guess it’s a good idea if we asked if you could specify what your
role is as far as your job with BIONICLE and what you do for people that might
not be aware?
Merlin: I think that 25 minutes into the interview that might be a
good idea! I’m really impressed at the people that hung on, not knowing who the
F I am! Kudos.
Merlin: Anyway, I’m a screenwriter. I’m more of… just a writer.
I do a lot of books, I’ve done screenplay, and stuff like that. For BIONICLE, I
was hired as as a screenwriter. It was a very specific job, because they knew
how many episodes they were going to make, how long they would have to be, how
they were going to be put up production wise, so it was pretty much said and
done. That being said, the meetings I had with the story team… they were very
open to suggestions. Obviously, I came in and had fresh eyes, in a way, to look
at some of the things and had suggestions, especially towards the limitations
that were there. And well, we developed things from there!
Meso: Makes sense.
Eljay: Now when it comes to screenwriting for these webisodes, do
you write strictly dialogue, or the entire parameter with some guidelines, of
course, such as scenarios, character movements?
Merlin: We actually had to do it pretty fast. That meant that the
storyboard artist worked at the same time I did, so it was pretty much a
ping-pong thing. I wrote full scripts, so I mean… there’s a full script for
every episode, with all the remarks that would be there for a normal screenplay
or a normal script. Obviously we had to ping-pong back and forth and work fast
and efficiently, so sometimes there was a “Listen man, the characters are
positioned like this, so is there any way we can keep that?” I would work
around that, and work things the best I could with what the storyboard artists
have done so we could get the animators to work as fast as possible.
Meso: Hmmm… that is very interesting.
Kahi: I don’t know if this is covered into the NDA, but could you
say if they were doing anything before that? Were they considering a TV show,
or a movie, or was it always “We want to do web episodes.”
Merlin: I should probably say, at this point, that what I was
brought on to do was ONLY webisodes. That was the only task at hand. I’m sure
the story team has been a part of the other platforms that are going to be
engaged, such as books, graphic novels, and stuff like that. I was never really
informed about that so I didn’t know what else was going to be produced. I was
only brought in for the webisodes, and that was at least this one season. Of
course we talked about it, because we had to throw lines, and set up things for
the following seasons and waves, but actually…
Merlin: I don’t know a lot about what is going to happen after the
Summer wave that’s coming out now, so we have a few things we set up in the
Summer wave which are going to be very exciting. Especially for me, seeing
where that all leads to. So far, it does seem to me like the webisodes was also
a way of testing waters. It was obviously, compared to doing real TV animationa
and stuff like that, a whole different budget. VERY, very low budget compared
to anything else you produce animation-wise. We had to move fast and be
efficient, which was fun, but also very obvious that if they were going to be
really serious about it there was going to have to be more to it. Especially
because there was a clear limit to how much story and how much background that
we could communicate on the very limited platform that we had. Again, now I’m
definitely moving into NDA covered territory, so…
Eljay (jokingly): Tell us more!
Merlin: Yeah, exactly! One thing is that… it’s definitely not
going to be down from here. They are going to… I think that if they want to
keep testing the waters, they’ve tested it now, and they have seen that there
is huge potential for BIONICLE. So I think we can be…
Meso: Cautiously optimistic?
Merlin: Yes, cautiously optimistic for the future!
Var: Awesome!
Meso: Well, obviously we have a certain perspective that is
different from a lot of people in seeing how the community reacts to BIONICLE.
Would you say that from your experience working from Lego… has it been a
success? Has the reboot gone well?
Merlin: To be honest, I don’t know. I haven’t seen any numbers, I
haven’t seen any… I don’t know how it’s gone as a line. All I know is that
I’ve spoken from some of the designers and obviously the story team, and people
are happy!
Meso: That’s all that really matters in the end.
Merlin: I don’t know how it all breaks down into numbers, but
perhaps… I don’t know. They actually had very great focus on the old fanbase,
they thought a lot about the old fanbase, mostly because the guys who were the
designers were PART of the old fanbase!
Meso: Makes sense, yeah.
Merlin: I don’t think there’s any doubt that a lot of people
involved with this new line are people who, in a way, feel that they’ve been
part of that community. On the other hand, I think there’s been a very clear
idea that it HAD to be broken into new ground. There’s a new audience out
there, and I think perhaps they underestimated a little bit just how much of
the old fanbase was going to still be active in the new BIONICLE, even though
there was a lot of respect for what had been done previously. This sounds like I’m
trying to get out of something that I’m getting myself into!
Meso: Don’t worry about it!
Kahi: Sidestepping the lawyers!
Merlin: That obvious, really? *laughter* Um, there’s no doubt that
when you do stories for LEGO, obviously it’s not like you do Star Wars and then
a toy line on top of that, it’s the other way around. The product, the toys,
are the fundamental.
Var: And I think that’s something that a lot of people in the
community, especially the younger people, fanbase, don’t necessary understand when
it comes to story making is that, with this line, it is most definitely the
toys that are the focus first and then the story after.
Meso: Exactly, there’s always been a lot of misunderstandings
relating to BIONICLE because it’s such a unique theme in terms of how the
stories delivered. A lot of people don’t grasp that concept as well as they
probably should.
Merlin: No, and I think that once again, you know, looking back at
what Faber and a lot of other guys did back then (and obviously Greg at a later
point) it was quite unique and in a way it was also one of those strange rare
freaks of nature and the universe and the stars in the right position that you
could do that in that way and you could create such a massive universe and you
could create such an epic story like the original story was and perhaps not
worry too much about where it was going to go. Don’t take it wrong, because
obviously it’s been down to numbers, it’s been to sales all along I mean it’s
not a charity organization. When they do a story for a line it’s in order to
promote sales for that line, obviously, but still with BIONICLE it was special
and this time around it’s still, because a lot of the designers and a lot of
people behind it have this DNA, obviously it’s going to rub off on it, but
still there is a different focus to make it easy to sale and easily accessible
to a completely new crowd. And also, I’m not going to sound old and stuff, but
kids have changed too.
Var: Absolutely.
Merlin: I mean, when I was a kid everybody was into toys and
within the past 30 years, it’s pretty tough to sell toys. Everybody is into
their digital games and their iPads and stuff. And being a toy manufacturer is
not a safe bet anymore. Which is probably one of the reasons why LEGO is now, I
guess, one of the largest toy companies in the world, because they’ve always
sort of had this focus on… well obviously I think the LEGO toy - the LEGO’s as
such - I mean it’s a brilliant toy, and playing with LEGO’s is brilliant. But,
what they also, and I think this is largely due to something like BIONICLE and
obviously also Star Wars and a lot of the other licensed things, but they’ve
also managed to tap into this culture that we talked about earlier. The
subculture, the ‘geek Culture’, the ‘collector culture’, the ‘comic book fan
culture’, this very, very, strong culture that should definitely not be
underestimated. I believe this is partly why LEGO can be so successful because
obviously the sales, I mean it’s not the geeks that generate all the sales that
LEGO can live off, but kids that get inspired by LEGO or inspired by the lines
look up to people. That means that people like you are the first movers, you’re
the people that kids will look up to and they will say “Oh, I’ve seen all these
MoCs, I’ve seen all these special builds, I’ve seen all these things, I’ve seen
grown people that get into this stuff,” and it’s like “woah this is
fascinating.” And it does rub off, I’m quite sure this makes a difference to
the sales that you’ll get in the end.
Kahi: I know a lot of us, or at least for me - when we started
getting into the fandom - we were involved because of the creative aspect it gave
us.
Eljay: Yeah, comics.
Kahi: Yeah, comics for me and Eljay were a big deal, and even this
podcast was kind of a creative endeavor. So that kind of draw to LEGO has made
it succeed.
Meso: It’s all about creativity, be it creativity with the sets,
or creativity with other media.
Var: Yeah and there’s not really a lot of other toy lines that are
really comparable. I think that… probably the biggest competition is…
Transformers is probably the only thing I can think of. LEGO’s definitely hit
this market that hasn’t really been tapped before by a lot of other toy
companies.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Kahi: It’s because you can do your own thing. You can make your
own thing.
Var: Yeah, I think that is also a big part of it, is being able to
not only be a part of this fandom and this story, but also being able to take
that story and craft your own thing out of it.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean when you look at it, you guys are adults but
you’ll see a lot of kids that try to do all these things as well. I’ve seen a
silly YouTube video and it might be crappy but my God it make me happy every
time I see it. I guess that means that we have, in some way, inspired these
kids to go and do something instead of just being passive consumers; we get
them up, and this is how you learn. This is how I learned about stories, I mean
yes, I went to the national film school of Denmark but that’s not where I
learned to do stories. I learned the craft of script writing, but telling
stories? I learned that from playing role playing games, and playing with
LEGOs, and playing with all these creative things. The special thing about, for
instance, the role playing community: it had both adults and kids being there
on the same terms. If you created a kick*** story, you had a place there. If
you had a lot of great ideas there was a place for you, it didn’t matter if you
were 14 or if you were 30, or however old you were. It was the creativity that
decided your place in the community and I think there are a lot of similarities
to the BIONICLE community as well.
Meso: Yeah, it’s all very unique
Var: I kind of want to go back a little bit towards actually
writing these episodes. You mentioned that there was a tight budget and there
was a time frame that you had to get things out. Did the process ever feel
limiting at all? Did you ever feel like you wanted to do things that you just
couldn’t do or have enough time to do?
Merlin: Well, obviously there were limits. This was sort of the
whole set up to begin with, “Okay we have a very limited platform, we have 90
seconds for each episode, we have different things that we have to set up, so
what can we do with that?” So in a way, if you had been in the process for the
entire ride you might of had some sort of frustration on that account, I
couldn’t tell. I didn’t feel that because this was just the challenge and I
enjoyed that challenge. I mean obviously I would have loved to do a full TV
show, or do the LEGO Movie BIONICLE part, or whatever - stuff like that would
have been fun but that was not the task at hand. It was very much, “Okay, this
is for the web, this has to be short.” And I think there was a lot of thought
put into how these webisodes were going to be shaped. I do think, though, that
the whole way we use the internet moves extremely rapidly, the way that it
evolve is very rapid, and just three years ago you probably couldn’t imagine
doing the things that you do today. Also we’ve sort of gotten use to “If you
show something on YouTube it has to be really short clips,” which is not
entirely true. You could have done longer episodes if you had chosen to do
that, I don’t think necessarily that the viewers would have been put off by that.
But well, this was the task at hand and it was a really fun challenge.
Kahi: When you originally wrote the episodes, did you know there
would only be one person doing the voice acting for everybody involved? Or did
you have the idea that there would be multiple voice actors when you wrote it?
Merlin: No, this was one of the limitations, it was going to be
just one voice actor. Actually, I probably have to take responsibility for that
because it was my suggestion that if there was only going to be one voice actor, we really shouldn’t have too many lines, we should make it try to feel more
like a story being told out loud. Which, on a concept level, sounded like a good
idea. Only problem was that when we started writing the webisodes, the lines
were just the most fun, and LEGO saw that and they were like, “Ah man, you
gotta’ put in more lines, they’re so fun. That’s how the characters really
start to live.”
And I was like, “Yeah obviously, with a full on budget and a TV show, obviously!” This is how you describe a character, through his lines and
through his actions, but that’s not really the task we were given. So In a way
I feel - and it might be hard to see on the first wave - but when you see the
summer wave, I think you can very clearly feel the emphasis from this storybook
concept thing that we had in the beginning into being much more like a real
animation with just one voice actor. That movement had gone over there, and
well, this was all part of the creative process, and I just hope that this has
helped the development try to support this line even more. And I don’t know
when the decision was made to do the graphic novels or do the story books, and
whatever else is going to come down the line, but I hope we’ve sort of made a
proof of concept in a way, and I think maybe that’s also a way at looking at
the webisodes and this line here. A way of testing waters and a way of feeling
where we’re at now. Do these characters still have a lot of life? Do they still
have a voice that need to get out? And I would say most definitely, and I would
definitely say we’ve far from reached the full potential of stories that we can
tell with these characters.
Meso: Well, as critical I am of the animations at points, it has
to be said that I love them. I greatly prefer the style of the web animations
as opposed to a potential TV show we could have gotten by Ghost; I think the
art style and just the story telling style works better than a Ghost animation
would have.
Var: Yeah, I also appreciate the classic 2D animation style.
Meso: Yeah at NYC they were really honing that in, it was a call
back to the original Mata-Nui Online Game, and that does come through in the
animations.
Var: I also think that the decision to have the animations be told
as if it was a story book was a good one. Especially if a single voice actor
was the limitation because it added to that. I know a lot of fans when they
first saw the episodes, a major complaint was that “Oh, Gali has a male voice,”
which if this was meant to be told as a normal animation with normal storytelling it would be hard to kind of excuse that, I guess. My argument towards
those people is that “This is meant to be told like a story being read out of a
book, it makes sense that the story teller performs the voice acting,” and I think
that really helps set the story up and be fun to watch.
Meso: When you approach it from that mindset it changes how you
view it in a more positive light.
Var: Exactly, especially for me because I’ve grown up with audio
books a lot. I use to listen to the Harry Potter audio books and hear the voice
actor read off all these different characters with all these different voices
he would do and for me that’s pretty nostalgic so it was really cool watching
these episodes do something similar to that.
Merlin: Yeah, I actually have the same nostalgic sentiment towards
it because I listened to story books as well and loved it. I would say though,
that I can’t really blame people for thinking that we tried to get into more
classical animation scenes or sequences because we did, it did take a shift
towards that. Which means that we did sort of end up in kind of a limbo between
the storybook concept and what should be normal animation style. I don’t know,
I think it’s part of an evolution in a way, it’s evolving and I guess that…
sometimes you think that when you work with really large companies like LEGO,
or Disney, or Pixar, that there’s always this master plan that’s been thought
out by the CEO’s and everything is laid out and stuff like that, and that’s
just very far from the truth. It’s a very, very organic process and I have to
say to everybody that you should appreciate the fact that it’s still an organic
process even though you’re in big corp land. Because that’s where creativity
comes from. Meeting obstacles and trying to get around them and trying to
invent new ways to deal with things, sometimes that means you’re going to miss
out, sometimes you’re going to fall flat but it’s also from there that the new
stuff, and the original stuff, and the stuff worth waiting for is going to grow
and I would say that, this sounds a bit like an excuse and it’s not, we could
have, with the budget that we were working on and with the task that we were
given, we could have aimed with just making commercials. We could have aimed at
making little action packed sequences that would work as ads, but the decision
was very strongly, no, we need to tell a story and I think that this was a
decision from the very beginning and from the top. So even though what we’ve
done with the webisodes was strategically part of early marketing, it still got
to be part of the story telling and I think that’s very important.
Var:
I agree!
Kahi:
I’m very glad you did not to just stick with ads. As people that do stuff based
on the content that BIONICLE puts out, I am so relieved. If we had just gotten
ads this year…
Meso:
“This is what we have to talk about for 12 months!”
Eljay:
“New on TTV, another advertisement!”
Merlin:
*laughter*
Var:
Speculation is what we do best, and we can’t speculate on commercials now
Eljay:
We can speculate their meaning
Var:
Yeah the deep meaning behind this commercial
Meso:
It’s very similar to the Mixels line, which it came out that it was going to
have a TV show and we were like, “Cool, another new IP that we can discuss
and talk about, maybe it’ll have a story, maybe not, but at the very least
we’ll talk about it,” then the TV show ended up being a series of mini clips
that played during commercials filled with slapstick humor…
Merlin:
*sigh* Yeah, I know…
*laughter*
Meso:
It was a very good decision, that if you had to do this web animation format
that you went that route instead of the other. It really says something that
the main complaint is that “I wish there was more of it.” If there is a
complaint to be had, that’s a pretty good one I guess.
Merlin:
Yeah, and there will be more, there definitely will be more. But I do
understand the complaint, and I think it’s a very fair complaint. Also we were
not exactly sure how… just making webisodes and putting it on the web, it
sounds like there’s a strategy for it and that everybody knows what’s going to
happen with it. Like when you put out a TV show you know pretty much what’s
going to happen, when it’s going to air and how many people are going to watch
it. But when you’re on the internet, I actually thought it was a good idea and
a good way of testing because then you can see how many people will share it.
Will this go viral? Will people get into it? Will people do podcasts about it?
You can interact with it in a different way and I actually thought that was a
strength to this, and I will say that probably with more confidence and perhaps
a bit more focus on what the web is actually able to do… the potential in
telling stories on the web is the interaction of the users. When you put out a
show or a movie, people just sit there, but if you have a series on the web, in
a way, you get everybody involved. And I have to say, I don’t want to sound
creepy or anything, but I started listening to every BIONICLE podcast from the
start, so I’ve heard your voices from the beginning.
Var:
Oh no!
Meso:
…Oh no!
Eljay:
Oh beans!
*laughter*
Merlin:
I know this is going to creep you guys out.
Var:
Oh no, it doesn’t creep me out - I’m just embarrassed.
Meso:
Our earlier podcasts really don’t hold up quality-wise.
Merlin:
Seriously, I think this is the way storytellers will have to understand. This
is the way of telling stories now. That’s going to be the next way of telling
stories, is playing role playing games with the audience or whatever. Sensing
what’s going on, what are people interested in and what grabs their attention,
and also what sprouts ideas and what creates new lines. There’s a whole
different level of interaction with storytelling, and I think LEGO and
especially the BIONICLE line is the right place to be to evolve on that and
experience that.
Meso:
Definitely! The BIONICLE team has always had a good track record of interacting
with the fan communities, I’m happy that tradition is continuing.
Var:
I think that’s what’s really impressed me about the current line of BIONICLE
versus other LEGO themes, is that it seems like they’re really trying to evolve
and explore new concepts. Especially as far as the internet goes, promoting
themselves on social media and interacting with the community, it seems like
this is a good step in the right direction.
Merlin:
Which also, of course - and now you guys haven’t said this yet, which is very
polite of you - which also means that when you mess up the way that has been
done online and with social media… and when you leak stuff at the wrong time…
*laughter*
Merlin:
I mean… it’s quite inexcusable in my opinion.
Meso:
BIONICLE 2015 was plagued with quite a lot of leaks
Var:
But that is sort of the issue with the internet, there are so many ways to get
info you have to watch your back every step of the way.
Kahi:
And in LEGO’s defense, I don’t feel like it’s just them. I feel like a lot of
stuff has been leaking just recently, like not even just the internet. I feel
like a lot of trailers have been leaking, Batman v. Superman, Age of Ultron’s
trailer… I feel like a lot of people are catching on, and sometimes they seep
through and people will pounce on that before you can get to it.
Merlin:
Yeah, and leaking is one thing, actually leaking can be fun. Believe me, some
of the leaks are intentional, I’m quite sure, I don’t know…
Kahi:
I knew it! I told you guys!
*laughter*
Merlin:
But where it really messes up is obviously when you’re trying to tell a story
and you’re trying to build some sort of storyline and some excitement, and then
all of a sudden three episodes are released and then taken off. What’s probably
even worse is the waiting time. You have momentum, and then poof, it vanishes,
and as any storyteller would know, timing is critical to how a story is perceived.
So this whole idea of trying to build momentum… I didn’t know… we didn’t - someone must have known. I didn’t know at the time of writing the episodes how
long it was going to be in-between releases, uh I thought it was going to be
way shorter between releases.
Var:
Yeah that’s the thing that has confused me the most, and I think it’s boggled
everyone here as far as what’s going on, because the release schedule seems very
confusing and hard to follow.
Merlin:
It’s very confusing, and I never saw any strategic plan, because that’s a
different department, so I don’t know what the plan was, but to me as just a
fanboy, not even as part of the whole thing, but just being a fanboy and trying
to enjoy it out there on the web, it was just very confusing. And really I
think, I mean it’s not like it loses anything, I think it was still fun, but it
didn’t improve the way it felt.
Eljay:
Yeah, it kind of dampened it.
Meso:
Yeah, cause like, there were three episodes in January
Eljay:
Four.
Meso:
Yes, four, then it was like, two a month, then one a month, then they got
leaked in Czech, then they were taken off, and then leaked in Italian.
Var:
For me, that was the most confusing part, certain countries that would get
episodes, like three episodes, ahead of the English episodes.
Merlin:
That was… that was kind of annoying.
*laughter*
Var:
And then obviously the community, being us, we would pick them apart and
translate it, so we would know the story before the episodes were even out.
Kahi:
BIONICLE has a very strong story following, so any bit they get…
Meso:
Everybody goes into a craze.
Kahi:
Right. Really there’s only about eight named characters right now, as far as
what we know now. There’s the Toa, Makuta, and Ekimu, but there’s already been
a bunch of theories.
Eljay:
And LOSS!
Meso:
Poor LOSS…
Kahi:
Oh yeah, Lord of Skull Spiders, I forgot.
Merlin:
I don’t know if it’s just been my blabbermouth that has taken this in all kinds
of different directions, but we haven’t really gotten into the episodes. But I
have to admit, Lord of Skull Spiders, he… he really lives up that LOSS label.
*laughter*
Merlin:
That was really kind of a bummer…
Written by Varderan, 5/20/15