A family inspired by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s speech to the children of Canada has “Legofied” his message into an animated short
Father Tyler Walsh said it all started in the family’s basement, where his kids, 9 and 12, dug through their vast collection of Lego to find the perfect facial expressions and build the appropriate sets.
The video begins outside Trudeau’s residence, with news media cameras lined up, flashes going off. When Trudeau speaks to “all the kids who can’t go on play dates or have sleep overs,” the scene cuts to children playing on a see-saw in a park.
A sad face peeks through a darkened window. When Trudeau mentions kids are “watching a whole lot more movies,” two Lego characters sit on a sofa watching one of the Lego movies.
The whole thing — from building the sets to shooting the photos to editing it all into a stop-start animation — took about 12 hours stretched over a week, said the Winnipeg-based father, adding he hopes the message reaches kids from coast to coast.
Walsh posted the video to Twitter April 5, and within 24 hours, it had garnered nearly 270,000 views.
Despite the light approach, Walsh said production was not always easy and some production decisions were tough.
“We had a good chat over Trudeau’s hair,” he said. “We found the right hair, but it wasn’t the right colour. So we painted it.”
