This was the challenge for Mike Teevee when hired to create Everything Is Awesome: Dance Together music video which was to coincide with the release of the brand new The LEGO Movie 2: Awesomer Together Film.

Naturally, this version had to include LEGO products, but the focus of the piece is to make branded entertainment.

This was quite the production and required an immense amount of detail to execute correctly. Mike Teevee engaged David Wilson, a director whose skill set included both live action, animation and is quite a name in the Music industry.

One of the many challenges we were faced with was that the settings had to feel like the The LEGO movie 2 universe but couldn’t be the actual film’s settings as this was clearly confidential and not to be used. We were granted the very rare opportunity to work with the actual character assets used in the Feature Film however, we had to create our own LEGO universe which felt like the original films’ settings.

With David’s direction and by engaging Ghost, the post-production studio, we designed and created a new CGI universe in which the characters could dance to the well-known music track.

What is so impressive is that all of the universes and products in the video can be built with actual LEGO bricks, everything had to be made brick accurate. In theory, you should be able to build the entire music video in real life using LEGO bricks.

Now that we had the universe designed the second challenge presented itself, the complex structure of how to make an awesome music video with dancers…. made out of LEGO bricks.

This is where David brought in his skills as a music video director, he broke the video down into several parts: close-ups of heroes, product shots, transitions shots for each universe, a buildup of tension before the song to establish a story, and a choreographed dance.

The trickiest part of the video was the choreographed dance because the “dance routine combined with action or journey from the characters had a huge amount of limitations.

We hired the choreographer, Chester Hayes, to create a carefully well-orchestrated popular dance, this dance was initially performed by people, videotaped and used as a reference for Ghost to animate the characters while sticking to The LEGO Group’s brief. Everything has to be brick accurate!

The careful planning and consideration of the brand allowed The LEGO Group to create a fun music video that allowed viewers to see more of their favorite characters, while still showcasing a new line of LEGO products.  The end result was almost 4 million views on YouTube and a happy client.