LEGO Masters: Interview with the third place team
Posted by MeganL,
Three teams made it to the finals, and given 24 hours to build something of their choosing. There were three great builds. Read on to read the interview with the third place team.
All three final teams were from Canada. The third place team was Dave and Emily, with their build of a city block being attacked by centipedes.
Tell us about your final build. How did you decide to use centipedes?
David: We do not remember why we did centipedes, we wanted to do a monster. A previous idea was to do a giant spider taking the city to use the little LEGO spiders. But then I think a previous contestant in a previous season had spiders attacking a city.
Emily: We were gonna do this like awesome city and the Brickmasters, when we first pitched our idea, said it needs like a story. You can't just be a city. There has to be some catastrophic event that's going on. And we're like “Okay, well let's do it under attack.”
David: I don't know how much you have seen a great like blue gradient mosaic on the back of the tallest building. I was really impressed with that. Inside the subway that there are lights flickering, and a centipede attacking down the subway entrance and through the tunnel.
Emily: What you don't see is David's "lettuce lattice" that he used for the technic free castle tower he used that in that giant building with the big mosaic on the side. So that's something that I don't think we see featured, but it's a cool technique.
What are your takeaways from this fun and exhausting experience? Do you still build with LEGO?
David: I have done a lot of LEGO things since being home from the show. As a LEGO fans you go through ebbs and flows of your desire to actually hit the bricks in your hands and stick bricks together. But being on the show, building LEGO intensively for hundreds of hours really reinvigorated my desire to have time to build LEGO. We've got a job and kids and everything else that goes on in life. But when I found pockets of time I spent all that time working on stuff. None of those projects I've been working on have actually come to fruition. So maybe one day you'll see some new things for me. But not in the immediate future.
Emily: Well, I definitely went home and built a lot of LEGO. All summer David - he's trying to thin out his - I want to say collection but we'll call it a hoard - of LEGO, so every now and then the LEGO fairy will come and like drop sets off at my house. I've always been more of a set builder, but I was really inspired after the show to come up with MOCs and I bought like ideas upon ideas for one day when I get a little more organised with my LEGO.
What was your favourite build from the season and why?
David: I know I had a favourite run of builds. It was the four episodes kind of in the middle. Pirate ship, summer camp, cat golf and Castle. I don't know exactly which one was my favourite of those four. But I think that chunk of filming with a lot of fun and I think those challenges were just a lot of fun.
Emily: My favourite build I think was our Marvel build. But I didn't like the challenge. We were all super stressed. We were all in terrible mood. We were super close with the docs since day one and they got eliminated, and it was the first episode after that. It was kind of weird to be in the build room without them. I love the build that we completed though, I think it's gorgeous. It was identical to the pictures. I think we did such a good job on that. But my favourite challenge obviously was the dogs. Obviously. I don't think that's a secret.
Partway through the season, you had a strong run of builds. What propelled you to step up your game?
David: I think being a little crazier with our imagination. I got started a little bit with Treehouse, but even then I don't think that was too crazy.
Emily: I feel like it took the first three challenges to really understand the brick pit and the parameters of the challenges. By the dogs episodes, we really could understand the challenge and the read between the lines kind of things were with them. I know for the pirate ships we really clued into it right away. Like okay, this is what they mean. This is what they want to see, and this we got to give them.
David: I know one of the things that started with the pirate ships was coming into our thinking like, I just have fun. Let's just have fun with this. And we'll see where it goes. We're trying really hard. Episode three we were in the bottom two, after the brick and rodeo. We couldn't go home. We're gonna lose now. So let's just keep having fun. And I think it showed.
What was the most challenging aspect of building on the sets compared to building at home?
David: I have an answer for that one. Wearing a shirt. Honestly, I normally build at home in like basketball shorts. I've lived in this house for six years have never turned the heat on in that LEGO room. Because when you're there working for hours on end it gets warm, and I'll strip right down to shorts or pants on but no shirt.
Emily: Comfort for sure is a big one because as the opposite, I like to be bundled in a blanket. We had to be onstage and in the morning. It was freezing on set, and it's hard to get your creative juices flowing when you're shivering. And, and then in the afternoons it was like stifling.
David: Like and then there are other challenges like I'm used to how I sort my bricks. So getting to know the brick pit was a challenge for the first couple of weeks, and then it became easier.
Any memorable interactions with Will, Amy, or Jamie?
Emily: Our final build. I'm actually sitting on the build for a lot of it to try to reach out to those tall buildings. Will came over. He was a lot funnier in the last couple challenges but it was almost like he was getting cabin fever. He came in and you know the camera crews all around and he walks in and steps into the shot with us and he's like, “Oh, Emily here I see you're finally building something to scale. Which one of these apartment complexes is yours?” He's always makes fun of me. And then he stepped out and reset to banter with us a little bit off camera. Then he was like, “Okay, we’re gonna do it for real now .” He came in and did the same line again. “Oh, Emily, I see you finally build something to scale which one of these units?” He did it five times. And it was so funny the second time, the third time it was ridiculous. We were laughing so hard. I had like tears coming down my face. I just couldn't stop laughing at the situation. And I'm like, “Stop, go away, we're trying to build.” It was so funny, but it was so much. It was hilarious.
David: I guess my favourite interaction that didn't air would have been during the the NASCAR episode Will is driving around the track, Facetiming people. The only celebrity that picked up was Sean Hayes. So then he asked “Who should I call next?”. And I just jokingly said, “Call my wife.” A producer go the number, so he calls my wife and she's at work. So she picks up FaceTime and there's Will Arnett talking to her. And then he drove around the track a few times talking to her.
If you could design a build that played to your strengths, what would it be?
David: Maybe something based on some of the builds that we did. It was nice to do an actual city themed build. Other seasons got to do them. And even us, doing classic LEGO themes. We did Space, Castle, Pirates. We didn't do Town and Train. We did in our final build. I would have liked to have seen a skyscraper challenge. Maybe it’s because I’m building skyscrapers right now. And not necessary to be the tallest, but I would have liked to see very early even when there's 12 of us, to see 12 skyscrapers.
Emily: We didn’t get any challenges were there was a twist in the middle. We didn't get any that your challenge is done, or it's almost done and guess what you get x more hours to do all this. We never got any of that. So I'd like to have an add-on challenge.
What do you think are the top three factors that make a successful LEGO Master?
Emily: Creativity, you have to have all your intuition. You need to have a crazy imagination.
David: I would say stamina and endurance, because builds get long. The schedule gets long. Creativity and just having an open mind. I think it's important to everything in life, especially with whatever we're is going to be thrown at you.
Emily: You need to have a really good team dynamic. I think that a lot of what benefited the final six teams, is that one person on most of the teams was a little bit ignorant to the limitations of LEGO. And we noticed that a lot, especially for final three teams, we’d ask, “Why can't we just do this?” I would say it a lot. I know Crash would say it a lot. And David and Stephen would be like, “Well, you can't do that with LEGO. That's not a thing.” He's like, “Well, why not? Let's just do it.” And sometimes it worked out great. Other times if it didn't work out, but it would kind of push you to try something different. It brought that innovative mind out of the more experienced builder.
What advice do you have for people starting in the hobby?
David: Connect with people. Whether that is from going to a convention or joining a LUG or Facebook groups and see if there's people in your area who are into LEGO. And I say that for a few reasons. One is - it's someone to share your passion with, two is someone you can build collaboratively with and trade and lend bricks, whatever you need to do, and three, people share deals. You find out there's a deal on LEGO at this store, that's a good way to build up your collection.
Emily: Just sharing ideas. A lot of what wasn't captured on camera for us is that we bounce ideas, especially with Stephens. I’d ask “Hey, I want to do this way” for one of the builds. Sometimes in the final build near the beginning, I was working on something and David was so focused he was like yeah, it looks good, looks good but wasn't paying attention. So I’d go “Stephen, get over and give me your opinion.” He came by and like, you know, we kind of brainstormed it together and worked out.
All photo credits: FOX
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Love these two and it was so great to see them find their groove and shine. And was so happy to find out recently that David ("Lettuce") is moving on to bigger and better things :)