Lego Christmas Story

The nativity built in LEGO bricks, created by animation company Go Chatter Videos

This year, the Entertainer toyshop has teamed up with Hope and Go Chatter Videos to bring an exciting Christmas story trail to 200 of their stores. We go behind the scenes with the young animator, Joshua Whitehouse, who produced the LEGO Christmas Story video.

You created the LEGO Christmas Story when you were just 17. How did you get involved with Go Chatter Videos?

I was living in South Africa, and in lockdown I decided to make some short LEGO animations for my church’s online Sunday school. In December 2021, Dan from Go Chatter Videos saw them and asked me whether I’d like a freelance job. I was still finishing school but started by making an Easter stop motion, and then the Christmas one.

So why the Christmas story?

A lot of people know roughly what the Christmas story is, but might not know the true meaning behind it. The way that humans have lived our lives has drawn a wedge between us and God. Amazingly, God came down to earth on a rescue mission. We feel that it’s important to get the true message of Christmas out in an accessible way that people can engage with and understand. LEGO has been an amazing way to do that.

Could you explain the process behind putting the stop-motion Christmas story together?

Creating a LEGO video is a painstaking process, involving taking the script and planning out the timings of animation for each rhyming stanza, through to designing, creating and building each set. This initial part took about two weeks.

For the actual filming, I set up a scene (which took an hour or two), worked on the lighting (in some shots I put smaller lights inside the houses to give a lovely glow), thought about the backdrop (sometimes creating a printed 3D image), got the figures in position and thought about how they were going to move in each shot. On average, it takes about half an hour to animate one second of footage. I animate twelve frames per second, which means that for every second of the video, there have been twelve individual photos taken with the characters moving twelve times. Combining all the setting up and so on, it takes about an hour’s work for each second of video – and then, of course, it needs to be edited!

Towards the end of the animation, you talk about the fact that Jesus came to die. Why was that important for you to include in a Christmas message?

Because the death and the resurrection of Jesus is how he finally worked out his big mission. Jesus did wonderful things, such as caring for people, miracles and profound teaching, but, ultimately, what he set his sights on was his death, which just seems bonkers. But he knew that was the only way to restore us to a relationship with God, as only he could take the punishment we deserved. That’s why in our animation we mentioned that Jesus came to die. We didn’t just want it to just be a nice fluffy story to show kids, but would love them to realise Christmas is the start of God’s great rescue plan.

To find out about all the LEGO Christmas resources we are offering click here