Q: Can you add narration to your real-time "Pure Builds?"A: While this sounds like a good idea for people who like the sound of my voice, the reality of such an effort would fall apart almost immediately.  There are only so many ways one can say, "Look how these two pieces go together; isn't that cool?"  Only a tiny percentage of assembly steps in LEGO sets are ever unusual and noteworthy, and it's even more rare to encounter something truly new.  In other words, me narrating LEGO builds in real time would become agonizingly boring and repetitive in the shortest of orders, to viewers and myself alike.  It has been suggested that I fill uninteresting times with small talk, but I hate small talk.  Multiple-hour LEGO builds and me struggling to find entertaining things to say are two things that definitely do not go together.Original linkOriginal author: theJANG

The numbers are clear.  When asked directly, the majority of JANGBRiCKS YouTube channel viewers want to see reviews of current LEGO products more than anything else, by a significant margin.  However!  There some other reliable quantitative measures very strongly disagree.  The situation is just maddening enough to motivate the kickoff of a risky, radical experiment, and it all starts this week.Read more »Original linkOriginal author: theJANG

Today I filmed, edited, and published a total of 6 hours of content to YouTube:1 hour 47 minutes of real-time HD Pure Builds40 minutes of shortened HD time-lapse versions of those builds19 minutes in a 4K quadruple-review on my Playmobil channel15 minutes in a 4K set review on the main LEGO focused channelIn all I chewed through 62 gigabytes of raw video footage and uploaded 13 gigabytes of finished product.Not bad for a day's work?PS: For MOC fans, the news is that I worked on a custom car for 5 hours the previous night. Didn't get it done, stuck on a perplexing build challenge.  I'll keep working on it and when it's done, it'll be worth about 30 seconds of video viewing time ?‍♂️Original linkOriginal author: theJANG

It's time for me to get very, very candid about some thoughts that have guided my actions, how I made some very serious mistakes in planning New Jang City, and how I've permanently turned a major corner in the course of my involvement in the LEGO hobby on the whole.  Grab a snack or beverage, and let me fully break the situation down for you.Read more »Original linkOriginal author: theJANG

When I first set foot in the second living/family room of this house, I immediately knew this is where I would put the LEGO city, if I got so lucky as to win the bidding war in the cut-throat near-coastal California real estate market.  I thought about how I'd arrange the tables and started to consider options for smoothing out the very uneven background image so viewers could focus on the LEGO, not the fireplace, the wet bar, goings-on in the next room over, etc.  Four years after winning the bidding war, I've taken the next major step in implementing my vision.Read more »Original linkOriginal author: theJANG

On a whim of curiosity, I tracked the time I invested into one new set, Avengers Compound Battle 76131.  To the public, there was a 23-minute build video and a 19-minute review produced, or a maximum of 42 minutes of total content, out of which the average viewer (per current, real data) will watch 11.5 minutes.  For those fleeting moments of entertainment, check out what transpired behind the scenes.Read more »Original linkOriginal author: theJANG

Recently I learned the hard way that surge protectors are a lie.  During an unusually windy storm, there were a couple of power outages back to back that caused power irregularities at their ends that went straight into my main rendering computer and wreaked havoc.Read more »Original linkOriginal author: theJANG

Over a decade ago I purchased my first pair of "softboxes," light bulb receptacles with each a flimsy tent-like pyramidal reflector structure and a translucent sheet of cloth over the big end.  It kicked off the second phase of my quest for an ideal backdrop & lighting setup for YouTube video reviews of radio controlled model cars & trucks.Today, I disassembled that very piece of equipment, its base yellowed from hundreds of hours of being cooked by storebought household CFLs and LEDs.  I had collected and employed other softboxes over the years, but it's fitting that one of my first to enter service would be the last to be exit.  This strange geeky detail has meaning to me because so much of my work, literally thousands of videos across three main channels and several spin-offs, has been defined by that ever-whiter background and steadily diminishing shadows.My goal was always to maximize...

(I was the first in the theater for this Thursday matinee premiere)"Absolutely Awesome." "Everything Is Awesome-ish." "Everything Is Not Awesome."  Early professional evaluations of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part have run the gamut from sounding like paid endorsements to utterly trashing the film as a time-wasting bore.  This deep contrast truly puzzles me because while extremism is the ruling force of our generation and histrionics generate clicks & ad revenue, TLM2 itself is a very even-keeled, level-running, inoffensive piece of work.Read more »Original linkOriginal author: theJANG

I suffer from a debilitating compulsion and I cannot escape it.  No matter what I do, I cannot keep myself from continually attempting improve the quality of my videos and the efficiency of producing them.  With my main white void studio I used to do changes once or twice per season, but these days I've found myself with less room to "improve" (a subjective term, I know).  Each update has moved the bar less, up to & including the last minor light rebalancing just a few weeks ago.  I'd assume many viewers don't even notice the before & after differences anymore as I'm well into the realm of diminishing returns. With Studio B for my builds channel, on the other hand, everything is completely fresh and there's no well-defined end point for visual success.Read more »Original linkOriginal author: theJANG