Filmmaker proposes with stop-motion LEGO animation
Walt Thompson wanted to propose to his girlfriend of four years, food blogger Nealey Dozier, “in a creative way,” and boy, did he ever.
The filmmaker and photographer took 2,600 pictures of LEGO characters, editing the images into a three-minute stop-animation story of their romance that ended with a proposal.
The day before their fourth anniversary, the couple sat down to watch the short film.
“By the time you see the last frame, she tried to run around and look at me, and when she turned around, I went on one knee and had the box, with two LEGO figures, the bride and groom, he had ring in hand,” Thompson said.
She said yes — after 10 minutes of excited Dozier asking a seemingly endless series of questions about the video.
“Poor guy had to wait it out for the answer!” she admitted.
“When it came time to start looking for a ring, I started building on the idea that telling a story with a stop-motion LEGO world would be kind of cool,” Thompson said, adding that it “became a lot more work than I originally anticipated.”
Thompson didn’t miss a detail. He matched the LEGO characters’ clothing to their own first-date attire. He found a LEGO table that mirrored the table in the couple’s kitchen. He carefully recreated scenes from their relationship — and did so secretly, behind closed doors, sneaking around his live-in girlfriend.
“I was very shady about it. It’s an engagement based on lies,” he joked.
The couple have yet to make wedding plans, but are sure that, like the proposal, it won’t be traditional.”
“It’s not going to be a cookie-cutter wedding,” Dozier said. “At the end of the day, we want it to be very fun.”
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