Rondina Family Creates Legos Film Together

Like many homeschooling parents, Mike and Wendy Rondina encourage their son and daughter's (Anthony and Jessica) creativity as much as possible. They even went as far as producing their film. How does a homeschool parent prepare to be a film producer, and how did their kids start creating a film? I had a great conversation with the Rondina family about their adventures in filmmaking and this new direction for their lives.

Animation & Humor   Legos Casting Call   Labor-Intensive Process

What's Next?   Future Goals & Good Advice

The beginning of the Jericho film project was a homeschool project for a history class. "My sister and I started doing this as a homeschool project," said Anthony (now almost 21). "We had to do 40 hours on anything we learned in history that year. We knew we wanted to make a movie, so thought about what we could use. We don’t have actors and a lot of equipment, but we did have Legos and cheap editing software, so we went from there.

"We got a lot of positive feedback, and over the years we kept refining our skills and meeting people who gave us input."

Anthony's mother Wendy talks about some of the feedback the kids received. "When the kids came to me, we had just heard about the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. We put a film in that, and Doug Phillips (founder) was so encouraging. He said, 'Make another one!'

"So Jericho is our third one. We’ve come a long way as far as adding faces that actually talk. We’re trying to get the Bible stories out in a unique and fun way so that not only children have fun with it, but adults have fun with it too."

Animation and Humor
Jessica is the main animator on the projects and talks about how they developed and animated the film. "It’s a pretty involved process. My brother and I love jokes and Bible stories, and we were really inspired by some of the movies we’ve seen. We want to make the Bible excellent and very approachable. So we did some research. I did the subtexting of the story, and my brother came in with all the jokes.

"After that, we invited a whole bunch of friends over and asked them about what kind of humor they’d like to see in a film. After that, we moved on to casting. We had everyone read some lines, and that was a lot of fun.

"Then, we animated the film. With stop-motion animation, you have to storyboard, because you don’t want to have to re-do anything, and you want to get it in one take, if at all possible. For this movie, we animated not scene by scene, but setting by setting. So anything that happened at the palace was done at the very beginning.

Legos® Casting Call
"Halfway through the movie, we realized we were running out of Legos®, so we did an extras call for Legos® with all of our friends. We used thousands of Legos®. There are about as many Legos® in the film as there are pictures in it."

Once the pictures were done, Anthony was responsible for effects. "Once I got the finished photos, I put them into Aftereffects, where I could do green screening. I put additional background behind them and animated the mouths.

"We found that Jessie was fantastic with animation. She had all these kind of tricks, and I love to work with computers. So we meshed very well."

Throughout the project, the brother and sister duo were constantly experimenting and revising. "With any script," Jessica said, "it’s a living document, so as we went through, we realized what we had to cut and rework. The biggest thing was storyboarding to make sure we had exactly what we wanted. Then it depended on scene by scene once we got to the animation process.

"We tried to speed things up by making a Legos® block and then looping it, but we realized that didn’t look good. To make it as intricate as possible, we had the background moving while the Legos® were walking. So pretty much everything you see is all touched by hands."

Labor-Intensive Process
From Wendy's perspective as producer, it was very labor-intensive work that called for months of production. "My daughter is the director of photography. She moves all the little pieces because she has tiny little hands. One scene can take anywhere from a week to a month to do.

"Our son Anthony is the post editor. He loves everything that goes with that, all the green-screening and other stuff. My husband and I take care of the business end. We do story encouragement and keep things going. We’ve all cried at one time or another, but thankfully it hasn’t been all of us crying at one time. We take turns. We do every part of the production together. We’re all integral parts, and the movie couldn’t have been done without any one of us."

The entire production took about two years to complete. The film was originally screened for the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, and based on suggestions from the festival, the team reworked much of the animation and recording. "It took us about two months to re-do that film," Anthony said. "When we did the original, we were recording on an iPod. When we re-did it, we actually bought a microphone and a mixer so the sound would improve."

What’s Next?
The next step for the team is obtain distribution for their film. Ideally, they'd like to persuade Legos® to create a set based upon the film. After that, they have other projects in mind. Possibly a film based on the life of Boaz or Gideon. Right now, however, they have other things to finish.

After graduating high school, the two decided to take an unusual approach to higher education. Anthony explains, "We’re taking college by CLEP testing, which is where you study at your home and then go take a test at a local university. That allows us a lot of flexibility to both make films and work to make some money."

Jessica describes their daily schedule during the production. "We’d wake up, study from 8 to 1, have lunch, and from then on until about 2 in the morning, we’d be animating. That took about a year and a half. Then Anthony's portion took an additional six months or so."

Jessica talks about the research they've done for future films. "We found out that our two main characters, Rahab and Solomon, get married and have Boaz. So the next movie we want to make is Warrior Boaz, because he participated in a whole bunch of battles, and he could have befriended the first judge of Israel, Caleb’s nephew.

"Then we’d continue with the Boaz story by telling Ruth’s story, but focusing more on the masculine side than the romance side."

Future Goals and Good Advice
However, before they make another film,they want to figure out a quicker way to animate. "We crunched the numbers," Jessica said, "And we don’t want to spend another year and a half animating things, because we don’t believe that’s a wise use of time. If we had three to four animators on a film, it could be animated within two months if everything works out right.

"So our really big future hope is to animate a film once a year and also to help other people on their projects the rest of the year. So it’s not just animation, but anything that God will open the door for."

As for how all this has affected the family, Wendy describes the changes in their lives. "My husband used to own a commercial landscaping business until last November, when the Lord had him sell it. Now we’re working full-time doing this. Money’s not coming in just yet but we’re working full-time. We trust the Lord, and it’s a really great ride right now.

"We are having a really great mentoring program going on with the next generation, and that is really our heart. We don’t just want to get our movie out there, but we want to help the independent Christian film movement go forward," she explains.

"We go to churches and explain the film movement first, then show our movie and serve popcorn. We show behind the scenes videos of how it’s made, and then we invite questions. God is planting families all over the place. He wants to use ordinary people to do extraordinary things. It’s very exciting."

When asked what advice she'd share with other aspiring filmmakers, Jessica is quick to mention finding something you're passionate about. "If you’ve got the patience for it, really run with it. You can go on YouTube and find all kinds of Legos® movies and stop-motion movies. You’ll notice a lot of them are just fights without any story. Whatever medium you’re using you need to have a story. Collaborate with your friends and get something you really believe in. Then all the work is play. It doesn’t seem like work any more because you’ve got a vision for what you want to do."

Note: This film is not sponsored or endorsed in any way by The LEGO® Group or its subsidiaries. LEGO® and the brick configuration are trademarks of the LEGO® Group.