Another animation from the world of dinosaurs. This one stands out for two things. First, it was filmed vertically for YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. Second, the set it features isn't minifigure-scale.

LEGO 76962 - Baby Bumpy: Ankylosaurus from Netflix' Jurassic Park: Chaos Theory is a brick-built dinosaur. When you place a figure next to it, it's gigantic. Like a full-grown Triceratops, or even bigger. However, in the show, it's more the size of a large dog or a small cow.

To connect it to the world of minifigures, I built the same background set in two different sizes and edited them together. I also used math to calculate the camera settings for depth of field so they seem identical in all scenes.

The animation was a moderate success - 776k views on Instagram Reels and 724k views on YouTube Shorts. It's worth noting that vertical content only lasts a few days. These numbers are from the first few days of publication. Now, no one watches it. It doesn't show up for anyone, unlike standard cinematic-style animations on YouTube, which can gather additional thousands, or even millions, of views long time after publication.

Speaking of these bloody formats, as always, I'll say that I am not happy with consuming content on phones held vertically. As a fan of classic films and cinema, I love wide, epic shots which are positioned same as we see reality through our eyes. Panoramic. Horizontal.

To make a video for a phone (9x16 format), you need a completely different approach to the shot, a different way to arrange everything in space. All important story elements must fit within a narrow strip. It's also best not to place anything important at the top or bottom, as it can be covered by icons, the title, and other app interface elements.

Just for me (it's worth noting here that, like all my Jurassic Park animations, this one was commissioned by LEGO, Universal, and Dreamworks), I decided to shoot this short so that it could be converted into a standard horizontal format film. Each scene had additional space on the sides to expand the whole thing to a 3x2 format. It's a taller version of the classic 16x9 cinema/TV format. See the example below.

It turned out quite well, although if I had shot it in cinematic format, I would have arranged each frame differently.

Random fun facts - on Instagram, a lot of people associated Ben, the main character, with Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad and his meth-cooking :D

Another interesting fact is the last scene, which was cut. The producers wanted the film to begin with a photo of someone we don't know who is in it. At the end photo was meant to be reveled. Unfortunately, no one in the audience remembered that Ben was looking at something at the beginning, and the last shot seemed completely disconnected from the rest, so it was cut. There was also no time to change the first shot, so the photo stayed there...

Oops, I've wrote long article again, and forgot about the most important thing - the video. So I'll start with this bonus one in 3x2 format:

Here's the original (vertical) short on my channel:

And here are the original uploads from LEGO:
🎬 youtube.com/shorts/7aWht7qAPEs
🎬 instagram.com/reels/C9hr081sByE