LEGO Masters NZ - Season 2 - Week 1

LEGO Masters NZ, Season 2 debuted last week with three episodes. Two were non-elimination episodes, but the third episode was an elimination.

If you are in New Zealand, these can be downloaded from the TVNZ website.

This article introduces the six teams following their appearances in these three episodes. The winning team from Episode 1 gained an advantage.

A tragic disaster at the end of Episode 3 led to that team's elimination.

To avoid spoilers for those who have yet to watch these episodes, I'll refrain from identifying them until after the break.

Rachel and Jason

MARRIED COUPLE

David: Tell me about your LEGO Masters NZ experience so far.

Rachel: The first few days on the set for the first few episodes was intense. But it was exciting. And on the set and in the Brick Pit, we loved it!

Jason: It was an amazing experience.

David: The build for Episode 1 was all those movie themes chosen by picking up an ice cream cone. And your selection was the sci-fi movie genre.

Rachel: Which, Jason, was your cup of tea!

Jason: It was all good. I thought, “I’ve got this.”

David: I was triggered by childhood memories when you conjured up the Kaikoura UFOs in your third episode build.

Jason and Rachel: That's right, that was Episode 3.

David: In the basement of my family home in Wellington, the wind, when blowing from certain directions, would push up the carpet in the living room, and so my father pasted sheets of newspaper underneath the floorboards of the house to stop the carpet billowing up when the wind blew into the basement.

And the newspapers dad used were all taken around the time of the Kaikoura UFOs, so I'd sit there in the basement looking up at these images under the floor boards of an Air Force Orion aircraft that had searched for the unusual bright lights off Kaikoura from Wellington’s Evening Post newspapers.

Rachel: Ha, ha. I love that it is a mystery that has never been solved.

David: That's right. Some people thought it might be the planet Venus. Or they thought it might be car lights refracting through the fog, but no one knows what they were. For your build on Episode 2, you had a fox-chainsaw fusion. You had a name for that character?

Jason: Wild Tooth.

David: That build was impressive.

Jason: Thank you.

Rachel: That was a fun build, but with Wild Tooth. Don’t do it this way if you are going to apply for a position on LEGO Masters. Never go on that show without first trying to sculpt an animal. This was the first time we ever tried to sculpt an animal.

David: You did pretty well on the first attempt.

Jason: The moment we rolled the chainsaw and the animal item on the wheel, we had a plan because back in my intermediate school days, we had the LEGO Dacta sets in our science class, and one of those cards had pictures on how to build a LEGO chainsaw.
One of my teachers at the time let me borrow those cards for a weekend, and I built all the creations at home from my Dacta collection.

David: That was the tail part of your model, which appeared on the show quickly.

Jason: It required a lot of fine-tuning.

David: It was assembled relatively quickly. It appeared on the TV show right at the start.

Rachel: It took about a third of the time.

David: You could see that you're frustrated because it would run for a while, then suddenly it would jam, and those tiny little chain pieces would get caught.

Jason: I was using the wide caterpillar chain track with 2x2 brick with the axel hole in it, but they don’t fit completely flush on the chain, and so there was slightly proud on the corners when they twisted a bit, and they kept popping the chain off. So that was when we took all those pieces off and put the horns on instead.

David: And it made it narrower, with the thinner parts?

Jason: Yes.

David: You did; you did come up with the comment during that where you, Rachel, works typically during the day building LEGO, and then you, Jason, come home at night, and you have a moment in the middle of the night where you figure out a problem. And now you have to work together side by side for many hours.

Jason: We still work side by side, but I will often build the mechanism and the chassis or whatever we are generally designing out of Technic subframes.

Rachel: We are never working on the same thing simultaneously. I'll be working on one side, and Jason will be working on the other. Typically, I work during the day, and I will leave Jason to be in our LEGO studio for two or three nights, leaving him to build the technical side of things, and I'll just come in every now and again. And then, once he is done, I will have the studio for a few days to myself, and I will get to make everything look pretty and have it come together nicely.

David: How has it been keeping the LEGO Masters NZ a secret from everybody in New Zealand for so long?

Jason: It was tough! Probably the most amusing time was during the Christchurch Brick Show last year. We were on the team that was part of the community event during the show. Rachel was interviewing the LEGO Masters NZ contestants from Season 1. We were just in hysterics and wetting ourselves because we knew all the answers.

Rachel: Because we asked the community to supply some questions, some asked, "What was it like to be in the Brick Pit?" They were obvious questions, and we had to act as if we did not know the answer!

David: Thank you for catching up with me tonight.

Jason: Alright, no problem.

Rachel: Thanks a lot, David.

David: Bye now.

Andrew and Harry

FRIENDS

David: I'm interested to hear about your first few days' experience on LEGO Masters NZ.

I want to talk about the Weta submarine that you built in Episode 2 and Episode 1, when you had an ice cream cone to select a genre of a movie theme. What theme was revealed when you opened the ice cream cone?

Andrew: Romantic comedy, much to our horror.

David: You built two big figures and a large camera.

Andrew: We tend to go for puns, terrible puns typically. So, we took the word romantic and emphasised on the start of the term: Roman. Romantic “as of Rome” as opposed to romance.

David: I didn't pick that up when I watched the show. So, is the romantic theme based around being Roman?

Harry: We love that word, but we were probably too clever for our own good.

David: Have you known each other for a while? Do you build LEGO together? What's the connection?

Andrew: We went through high school and university together. So, we've known each other for probably about twelve years.

Harry: Yes, we were in high school together, and then we ran into each other during an Abel Tasman walk in the early 2010s. And I have a distinct memory that one of the first things we talked about was our love of LEGO, and from that moment, we both realised that we both really liked building with LEGO.

We hadn't really built together until we started training for LEGO Masters NZ. We talked a lot about the horrific influences LEGO has had on each other's wallets. But we never built together until we started doing stuff for this show.

David: What were some of the things you did to prepare yourself for LEGO Masters?

Andrew: We both liked tramping in the bush as kids, so we started building outdoor landscapes together. And then we realised that neither of us could build characters before. So in preparation for LEGO Masters, we started building brick-built small faces and that sort of thing and trying to work out how to do that. Which was thankfully useful in Episode 1.

Harry: The training probably pushed us towards that type of preparation work.

David: In Episode 2, you built the Weta submarine. The wheel randomly selected the submarine as the vehicle and Weta as the creature. And the key feature was the two little propellers driven by universal joints going down the long rear legs of the Weta, which worked during the testing, but in the end, something must have jammed up.

Harry: I'm will put my hand up and say it was my fault. When we had the brick-built cone section attached at the back, it stretched the legs out a bit too far, causing the universal joints to lock up.

Andrew: It was the design of the legs in the first place because they were all using those large ball joints, and they could shift and more. I should have used technic framing so that it couldn't move, and they would all stay at the same angles, whatever happened to it. Because the universal joints came out of alignment, there was too much friction.

David: Yeah, that makes sense. In the third episode, which was aired last night, you had the Kea flying away with the Jandal in the picture frame. When I watched it on TV last night, there was the team that had the bungee jumper in which the picture frame fell over.

It didn't do much damage, but I kept thinking, these things will topple on your tables. They looked so precarious when upright, but when you're building them on the flat, it's easy to put the LEGO in them, but as teams tested their models upright, I thought, "Shivers, there's going to be some grief."

Harry: I seem to remember that we were incredibly cautious with how we tested; We tested by holding it upright, and we always had someone holding on to it. We never left it freestanding.

Andrew: We were concerned because we had to take our hands away. In the end, we were initially quite concerned about leaving it there to be judged, but I think everyone just stopped thinking about their models at the moment that we heard the crash.

David: How has it been keeping your participation in LEGO Masters NZ, Season 2, a secret for a long time?

Harry: It's been slightly unbearable, but there have definitely been multiple levels of keeping this a secret. I think Andrew and I both told close family and friends. We suddenly just shut up about LEGO Masters and then went off the grid for a few months for a few weeks.

Andrew: Family members worked it out when I said, "I'm disappearing for six weeks." And I had to tell my work supervisors, but outside that, it has been a real secret.

David: Is it strange seeing it on television edited the way it is after such a long delay?

Andrew: There must have been tens of hours of production footage that must be tuned into forty-five minutes of TV. It's pretty interesting to see what gets kept and a lot of explanation stuff of your design process gets cut. And then the dramatic moments get kept, of course, but it's also strange to re-live it.

This was our first season of LEGO Masters NZ because, as you know, it was filmed back-to-back, so we hadn't seen the episodes from Season 1 at that stage. It's been strange watching them effectively, to us, in the wrong order and then in the correct order.

David: Is there anything else you would like to add? I'm just going to wrap this up.

Andrew: What has impressed me is how incredibly quickly the standard increased between Episodes 1 and 3.

David: Well, thanks for catching up with me.

Andrew: Thanks, David.

Harry: Thanks so much. I look forward to reading this.

David: Bye now.

Amy and Llewe

COUPLE

David: Tell me about your experience of LEGO Masters NZ for the first three episodes.

Amy: Absolutely. It was a roller coaster of emotions.

Llewe: It was a ride, and it's weird because it was literally a year ago. So, it’s a bit weird to be reliving it all now through television.

Amy: Returning to the first episode, after a few hours of filming, we were questioning what we got ourselves into. It was a new way of thinking and learning to build with bricks.

Llewe: Many of teams were thinking like that after the initial shock.

David: Tell me about seeing the Brick Pit. Seeing all the two-and-a-half million bricks. And I know that what you see on TV is only a fraction of what is available.

Amy: It’s not that pretty out the back. What you see is so amazing. I love all the colours. Just the vast quantities of the rainbow. I love the rainbow colours they have ordered or all the 2x4s. It was so great. We don't have a lot of purple or pink in our house. So, it was nice to have access to that. And if you needed four-hundred 2x4s or plates or whatever. You could just get them.

Llewe: So having the quantities was cool. I know that Robin for Season 2 tried to get certain elements that he wanted to be included, and we didn't know the difference because we didn't see what was available for Season 1 teams.

But even so, it still challenged your creativity because even though there were a lot of bricks, there wasn't a huge variety of bricks. So certain things that you might have expected to be in there weren't necessarily there. But there were, like Amy said, vast quantities of them.

So, it pushed you in different directions. You had many of the same things but not necessarily a wider selection than what they portray on television. The Brick Pit was set up for tv, especially the rainbow ones in the front. They might be useful and occasionally. Often all the actual useful bricks were hidden in the back.

Amy: The triangular plates were relatively limited in colour. They had really cool translucent rock pieces.

Llewe: You had to be careful about which colours you chose for something because there might be some really cool colours, but then you might have a minimal selection of bricks and colours. So, that was interesting.

Amy: Originally, our Custard Bear was going to have a giant LEGO brick. We could only build that in black or white, so we thought that was quite boring, so we changed it to Llewe's favourite food: a custard square.

David: And Robin Sather didn’t know what a custard square was.

Amy: We introduced him to a Kiwi delicacy.

Llewe: Apparently, he quite likes pies as well, from what I have read.

David: Then you had the Formula One Tuatara. That was cool.

Amy: It was incredible how they were so opposite to each other. And how funny that got landed on that wheel. It's hard, though. They wanted things big and tall, and that one will be flat.

Llewe: Flat and big!

Amy: And it was Llewe’s first time building a motorised car. It was good that it worked when it was so heavy.

Llewe: Hindsight is a beautiful thing. And if I was going to do it again, I would definitely make it maybe a third smaller in scale with much bigger tyres, almost like a monster truck.

Amy: Llewe has done a few animals that have cartoony faces.

Llewe: Hindsight is a wonderful thing. And if I was going to do it again, I would definitely make it maybe a third smaller in scale with much bigger tyres. Almost like a monster truck.

Amy: We were limited in the parts. That earth-green colour had just had a couple of parts in it, and there weren't any curves. That would have been nice to add to it.

Llewe: I think there were only 2x4 plates and 1x1 plates.

Amy: I used an upside-down chair for his eyebrows. NPU - Nice Parts Usage - was built into the brief, so there were a few things in the build. The spikes were the Technic car panels. And Custard Bear had the little bendy arrow pieces for his hair that didn't appear on TV.

David: In Episode 3, you had a bungee jumper, and your model fell halfway through the show.

Amy: I reckon they emphasised that because I honestly said two swear words. How Llewe didn't say a whole lot more – I do not know. We had tested and tested and tested because we were told to test. And Robin didn't believe we would pull it off with that bungee jumper hanging way out as it did.

And so Llewe often said, " Let's pull it up, let's pull it up. We had done it so many times, and then he started to pull it up, and he didn't quite tip it all the way, and I had shifted some bricks or was doing something else, shifting some bricks out of the way, and I thought Llewe had it, and he just let it go. And then it just fell. I said, "Oh my God!"

It was just two hours to go, and I thought our time on LEGO Masters was over. I was gutted when it landed. It looks like it fell apart, but actually, only a tiny part of the bungee jumper came apart. What it hit was a tray of purple 1x1 bricks that we had used, and they blew up in the air like confetti, and they all landed into the frame, which was fun.

So when I stood back, and they caught me laughing, it was a bit of a relief that our build was alright.

We love that build. It was such a neat, neat concept, but what they missed is that we tried to do it based on a 1930s Art Deco poster style which is why we went for those colours. But it didn't get explained, which was unfortunate. But, yes, we loved that little challenge. Confining it down to something a bit smaller might have been a bit more manageable.

Llewe; Llewe; Like Amy said, that part of the concept got cut in the editing, which was a bit of a shame. And also, the lighting didn't really help emphasise the model much either. At the time, Robin was on board with the idea, and he quite liked it.

David: Thanks for catching up with me.

Amy and Llewe: See you. Bye.

Henny and Pieter

MOTHER AND SON

David: Tell me about your LEGO masters experience and how that unfolded. A mother and son team? Are you members of LUGO – the Otago LUG?

Pieter: Mum pretty much got me into it. Mum gave me my first LEGO set when I was about four years old, and it wasn't until my teens that I started building LEGO properly, like doing mocks. And when the time came around to apply for LEGO Masters, I was doing the application process. At first, I felt like I didn't know anybody I could ask to join in with, and then I got a call back because I included my mum in my video application for the show. The staff said, "That'll be really cool. Why don't you see if your mum wants to do it?" Mum was hesitant at first. She said, "I don't want to do it." But I managed to encourage her, and, yes, she agreed to come along and do it with me.

David: This is the first time that you've seen it all edited together, and you've had to hold on to your participation secret for such a long time.

Pieter: I was getting really nervous about seeing it again.

David: Talk to me about when you arrived at the LEGO Masters set for the first time, your arrival on LEGO Masters NZ for Episode 1. Seeing the set design, seeing the Brick Pit and how that felt. That this ia a new experience for both of you?

Henny: Oh, that was amazing. Just coming into the room itself. A great big room with LEGO bricks on the walls.

Pieter: They even decorated the room with LEGO shape patterns. I mean, I've seen it on the Australian LEGO Masters but walking into it was just a completely different feeling, and there was so much care and effort put into it. Even the seat design of it. It's just like. “Oh, my goodness.” And the Brick Pit is just like. . .

Henny: . . . Your favourite place.

David: Yes. Two and a half million or three million bricks of all different shapes and colours, and you got thousands of a particular part. And there are no limit limitations!

Pieter: There were times in when we were looking for a particular kind of brick, but they didn't have it. And it was like, “Oh my Gosh. What are we going to use?” I think a lot of the time, we had to adapt to a different building style because it was a rush to build and to think really quickly about changing to make it work.

David: In the first episode, all the teams were given an ice cream cone to open up to reveal the movie genre. What was the movie genre for your first build?

Pieter: We got a wildlife documentary.

David: You built the South American pyramid with the documentary team in the corner with the snake coming out.

Pieter: When Dai came out, it was as a surprise. I was thinking, “What are we doing?” But then it made sense with the ice cream.

Henny: You started doing that tower. . . the ruin. . . and I started the snakes and the anacondas.

Pieter: We had to give it some thought because the wildlife documentary differed significantly from the other categories or genres. It was the only one you couldn't put in a film set. We had to think of what would make a big backdrop or something quite impressive.

David: That came through on the show. The other teams could construct a set as part of their model, but you had to have a real-world natural environment setting.

Pieter: We instantly went with a David Attenborough-styled documentary as soon as we could.

David: I remember at the end seeing that little film crew down and down in the corner to give it the context of the movie sitting.

Henny: That was a rush job.

David: I thought the snakes were particularly well-built. Was that your contribution there, Henny?

Henny: Yes. Peter was saying the brick that I really wanted were not there, so I had to compromise with other bricks.

David: Let's talk about Episode 3. I felt a real connection with that build because I'm a mariner who has sailed past to Taiaroa Head and the Royal Albatross colony in ships for all of my career. And I looked at your lighthouse and I saw the albatross. And I saw the yellow and blue scarf wrapped around his neck and picked up on those Otago colours. So, talk to me about that creation?

Pieter: When we were given the category, it was quite a hard, hard challenge because there were three things: there was Kiwiana, and it had to be lit, and it had to be hung. We had to think of what sort of lighting elements can could apply and what would make it stick out? We eventually got to the albatross and the lighthouse. We really wanted that albatross to be coming out of the frame. I did think that that was a good idea. When we were thinking of it, we were just thinking of our hometown and what is important to Dunedin.

David: I thought it was a good idea. Anyone who has been to the Royal Albatross Colony - me and my partner went there a few years ago - can see the great work that they do. And like I said, I've seen the lighthouse, the signal station where ships talk to the port as they are approach the pilot station.

Pieter: I wasn't too sure if I got the colour right.

David: It's a white lighthouse but with a red roof.

Pieter: A white lighthouse and a white Albatross, and so we needed to add some colours.

David: Call it “artistic license.”

Tragic disaster and elimination

David: That build was pretty cool. I have spoken to the other teams, and they've all commented that the way the show was edited this disaster happened in real-time: as they were counting down, you went from having quite an impressive model to all of a sudden all your work collapsed.

That was a conclusion to that episode that nobody wanted. I'm really sorry for how that episode ended for you guys.

Pieter: It's, it's just one of these things. You know, it's just one little mistake.

David: What was it that you were going to switch on? Was it the lights or something?

Pieter: Yes, I kept turning the lights on and off during the building build process because I didn't want to waste the batteries. I didn't want the batteries to die. At the last minute, we noticed that they were switched off, and then Mum asked, "When are you going to put them on?" The light switches were inside the albatross and in the back of the lighthouse. I tried to get the albatross side panel off. And then it just crashed . . .

David: It was evident that this affected everyone on the set. Everyone was caught out when your model crashed.

David: How has been on LEGO Masters NZ, now that it has been broadcast, affected you? Now that you are world-famous in New Zealand. Have people stopped you on the street and commented yet?

Pieter: I have got a few messages from old high school friends or workplaces saying sorry they were. It's really good that you were on LEGO Masters. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Henny: Two ladies from work saw us on TV, and they were in tears!

David: Did you build a detailed LEGO model of the LEGO model of the Dunedin railway station? I've seen images of an accurately built Dunedin railway station that has been to a couple of brick shows?

Pieter: Yes. That’s my model. It’s terrible to travel with, though!

David: How many years ago did you build that?

Pieter: About five years ago.

David: Henny. I've seen a review with you and a little sign machine.

Henny: Yes.

David: Can you talk to me about that creative flair of yours?

Henny: Well, I thought, "What can I do a little differently with LEGO?" So, I took my sewing machine at work home. And I just started building a model of it. I had to find all the bricks for it. And from there, well, it looks really, really good. I also built a table and chair to go with it, but they have gone now, but I've kept my sewing machine.

David: I have seen it, and I agree, it's a really attractive model you've built there.

Henny: Thanks. It's a small model, but I think it is great.

David: Well, thanks for your time.

Henny: Thanks very much.

Oli and Charlie

SIBLINGS

David: Can you tell me what it was like being on LEGO Masters NZ?

Charlie: It was pretty cool. People at my university didn't know, and a few random people at university have asked me about it, and then I have had one person randomly walking past just pointing at me, recognising me from the show.

David: Oli, you are away from New Zealand right now. Have you been able to see the show?

Oli: Yeah. I’ve been able to stream it live.

David: All right. Can you tell me about your experience on LEGO Masters NZ? Arriving at the set and going into the Brick Pit. Tell me how it made you feel to be part of this pretty cool experience?

Oli: Oh my gosh, that was so surreal. The first time walking into that set and see something of this kind of feels fictional because we've only seen it on TV before. It's never been in real life. That was really cool. And just the energy of everyone else having the same kind of experience as us, like never being able to build on the scale before, was so exciting.

To get into it, we definitely spent the first couple of episodes just finding our footing and figuring out how we worked best together because although we've done a lot of working in building together in the past, it's never been to the same extent as on LEGO Masters. It's a very different environment. So definitely, we were finding our footing for those first couple of episodes. I think from here on out, we're much stronger. We've got stronger dynamics.

David: The first episode was the movie genre where you were given an ice cream and took the top off the ice cream. What was your theme for that first base build?

Oli: Our theme was horror.

Charlie: We built Bananageddon because our idea was, what is a monkey's worst nightmare that was also their best friend? Bananas become the greatest enemy. It was all kind of set in a monkey film franchise when the film was Four Monkeys formed on the set which I don't feel came across as much on camera: just how much it was all aimed at the monkeys. But that was fun.

We even built caravans on the side, which weren't shown, where you can see the mini-figures getting dressed in banana suits with their head poking out, which I thought was pretty cool. It was loads of fun to use our creativity. It was a great combination of me doing lots of mechanical stuff. You could see also that I'm not an artist. There was the warehouse that I built, which was just basically a square with the plate lying on top. Nothing particularly beautiful, and that's because Oli made it look more. . . nice.

David: In the second episode, you built the Pukeko industrial robot. There was quite an apparent split between your strengths; There was the robotic side in Powered Up functions built by Charlie, and then there's the aesthetics and the design component with you, Oli. You are a very complementary pair.

Oli: I think definitely, in the first couple of builds, you can see what is Oli's and Charlie's designs. But I believe in the future builds, our styles kind of blend a bit more because we've found our footing, and there's like a lot of things where, if I'm struggling with something, I'll pass it over to Charlie and vice versa. It becomes a little more interchangeable. It becomes like both of us working together rather than us trying to meet in the middle. It's weird.

David: One of the things that I've noticed as a viewer is that your time management is excellent. You know what you want to build quite early on, and then you go flat out to achieve it, and you have a rest from the last hour when you have completed what you want to do, and you're just refining and tweaking. Is that a fair comment?

Oli: That certainly happened once or twice, but the rest of the time, that last couple of hours is very stressful. And it doesn't always come across that way. All of our planning process has to be done in an allocated time. We just take the first idea and run with it and work on it as we go. Rather than spending hours planning and then running out of time to actually. . . build. Would you agree with that, Charlie?

Charlie: YYes. As we build it, we figure out in more detail what we want to do with our build. With Bananageddon, we started with the idea of a giant banana that was being filmed. But then, over time, we figured out the story going around it. Like having the paparazzi in the campervan; that was added on as we were building. As we were building it, we were talking about it.

Also, we are quite fast builders and sometimes when we're doing big things. As you saw in the art piece you saw the whole background that was done quite quickly on which meant that it gave us more opportunity to work on small things just because of that speed.

David: It definitely came through with your bananas. I think Robin Sather comes in and says, “What defines a banana?” as he suggested that banana peel needed to be added so that even though you're on to a banana you tweaked it to make it a little bit more noticeable.

David: Robin also his ten metre, three metre, one metre judging rule. You have to stand across the room and be able to see what the model is and getting closer you get to see more detail. Has he talked to you about that judging style?

Oli: Every episode. Yep. It's ingrained! 10-3-1.

Charlie: And testing. . . testing. . . testing!

David: Episode 3, which was on Wednesday night, you actually came through as the winner. That was where you had Kiwiana sunset scene. How did that feel winning that episode?

Charlie: That was one of the most like roller coaster experiences of the show because Henny and Pieter's elimination actually happened at the last minute, which sad for all of us because we knew how much pain they were feeling, and our feeling was quite low coming out of the high of winning which was quite an emotional time.

David: I saw is that it was all happening in real time. It was in that last minute countdown coming up to thirty seconds to go and Pieter reached into switch on a battery box. They went from having a viable model - something that they worked on for twelve hours - to having nothing at all as the model just crumbled off. It must be really devastating for everybody concerned. There was quite an emotional impact on everybody and how you wrapped around Henny and

Charlie: Henny and Peter disaster struck them which couldn’t come back from.

Oli: After it happened, I did think that when it shows on TV that it's going to feel like it's been dramatically emphasised, but it actually was just that devastating, and that sudden, that you couldn't just make it up like that. It was too unbelievable to make it up like that I think that we had all bonded so much already as a team because, by that point, we'd had a lot of time on the show because we had done a lot of filming, and had breaks due to COVID. So even though it's only three days, on TV, it was a few weeks that we'd all known each other and obviously, stresses were high. Everyone was emotional already. It's just so draining, building for that long. I can’t imagine how they would feel.

David: What came through my interviews with the teams from in the first series of LEGO Masters NZ, Season 1 is that, for them, it didn't feel like it was a reality show where they are all competing with each other; It was a show where you are all complementing each other's creative strengths. And there was a real bond and friendship that has developed amongst those twelve contestants from Season 1 and I would imagine that you have a similar sort of friendship that will be lifelong for the people that you've been working with for these weeks or months.

Charlie: We all wanted each other to their best. So, for example, Pieter or Henny’s team or Angus and Carsten, they were both quite artistic, but they didn't know much about robotics. But in between the breaks they talked to me or Jason Harry, about how to use some of the electronics so that they can do it as well. And we were always open to wanting to help them because we all working together with ideas.

Oli: To add on to that. I would say that had a mutual agreement amongst the teams that we'd come up with the ideas on our own separately, but then once that idea was formulated, we would help each other out as much as we could. Obviously focusing on our own things, but we had a lot of time during lunch breaks to brainstorm, help each other with suggestions.

There was no adversity like, “Oh, it would be really good if these people did that, but I'm not going to tell him that.” We were very open with each other and positive because we did want everyone to be able to do as well as they possibly could.

Charlie: It kind of annoyed me watching the show. Angus is going and looking at the teams, and it was made to look like he was a bad guy with the dramatic music in the background. But Angus was one of the nicest people on the show. Because he was also very supportive of other teams and helping them to do their best.

David: That's interesting to hear.

Oli: It was funny, though.

David: Well, they've got to make it good TV. The success of this is the ratings, controversy, and teasers. They will cut to a break at the moment that something collapses. And there's twelve or fifteen hours of actual building which was filmed over probably two or three days depending on whether it's a twelve-hour task or a fifteen-hour task, and they've got to strip that down to forty-five minutes of actual footage.

Oli: Yes. I'm so impressed with that I've done. I'm obviously biased because I was there, and I lived through it, and it's awesome to see it playing back most of the time. I think they've done a really good job of editing it and making it and quality TV as well. Which is really nice to see.

Charlie: All the teams got decent screen time which is quite good. I think Oli and I got more time than most people compared to some of the Australian or American LEGO Masters series. It's a lot more balanced than other shows.

David: That is great to hear. Thank you for spending the time with me.

Charlie: Thanks.

Oli: Thanks. Cheers, David, thank you for your time.

David: Thank you.

Angus and Carsten

NEW ALLIANCE

David: Tell me about the first few days that Episodes 1, 2 and 3.

Angus: Our model for Episode 1 was the one with the sea serpent. It was based on a Lord of the Rings theme. As I'm sure you've picked up through the show. Carsten and I really only met each other previously once before, mainly through Zoom meetings like this. A lot of that build was just us trying to figure out how can we approach this thing with our completely different styles.

David: I picked up last night, Angus, that you have a very relaxed way of dealing with stress. You work in a very methodical which is how it came through on the show. Can you describe that process for me? How do you manage your stress because some people get frantic, and you're at the other end of the spectrum?

Angus: I appreciate that. I'm quite fortunate that I've been in the creative industry for about eighteen years now. I was doing brand and print marketing; working to tight deadlines; dealing with difficult clients; and so on. Through my career, I've been lucky enough to build up a tolerance to stress. And I know for a fact that if I'm stressed I'm not able to do my best creative work, and so I've just disciplined myself to tune that out or to not get too caught up in the moment.

I think we worked together well in that regard. I think we complemented each other really well When Carsten starts building, he is an absolute machine. I think had we both been the way I am - slow and methodical - we would not have built anything. I think if we'd both been like Carsten and just building, we may not have thought things out enough. I think the two of us jelled really well in that regard. We were opposite ends of that spectrum.

David: Carsten, would you like to comment on that? What is your building style?

Carsten: Well, I haven't been building LEGO for thirty years. It's really only been because of COVID that I got back to it. My mom was visiting me here in New Zealand. And at that time, I was working in New Zealand. So we all knew where COVID was going. Where I was working, I knew that we all had to help the company to survive during the pandemic.

I volunteered to take leave without pay, so I could take my mum back home to Denmark. She was stuck here for seven months, and then I got my mom home to Denmark where we were locked-down there for seven months there as well. And that is actually where I started reconnecting with LEGO again.

It’s like you never forget how to ride a bicycle. But when I got back into LEGO, I was in my zone. I just, I just love creating. I started looking around what other people were building because in these thirty years, LEGO has changed so much and there are so many new LEGO bricks that I don't even know how to put them together.

I've always been a little bit artistic because I have a design degree in fashion. I do like art and stuff like that. I like seeing different building techniques, such as bending bricks and working off studs and stuff like that. So that's how I want to approach some of the challenges to incorporate that into some of our designs.

In the first episode with the tower, like there was not a brick that was lined up stud-wise like LEGO is meant to be. And that came through, I think, in the first episode. I know it's something LEGO doesn't approve of: when you buy a LEGO set they don't do illegal building techniques. But, I like working like that, and I think Robin liked that, as well. So, I think I like to build differently than other people.

David: In the second episode, you guys built the mechanical spider digger, and you built the cute, little baby diggers to complement the main model like when you see a spider and thousands of baby spiders come out of a nest or a cocoon or something. That was pretty cool. And you've got the Power Brick

Angus: I was inspired by being a single dad just trying to get my kids out the door in the morning.

David: Yes. And you obviously won the Power Brick on the first episode, and you haven't had to use it up to Episode 3. How has it felt to have this backstop or safeguard?

Angus: I think maybe that it helped with the third episode, the first elimination episode, because we didn't have some of that pressure that some of the other teams had. We had that safety net. With that being said it was still a stressful build.

David: The impression I got from talking to the teams during LEGO Masters NZ Season 1, and also just briefly from my exposure to these teams from Season 2, is that you are unlike contestants on other reality TV shows where it's really competitive. LEGO Masters is more of a family, supportive environment.

And that came through last night. One of the teams earlier tonight had said that the end of Episode 3 wasn't even edited for TV; it was happening in real time. Within 30 seconds from the finish, the model went from being viable to having nothing to show just from Pieter searching for the switch on a battery box.

Angus: Absolutely. I still have images that have been burnt into my retinas from it, and to relive it last night was just exhausting. And they were such a lovely team as well. Henny and Pieter are just so sweet.

We ran the risk of things falling off all the time. The kiwi that we had, which was almost entirely sticking out of the frame, his head was held on by a couple of studs and small little beam and a lot of hope. And every time we moved that thing we could see his little head wobbling. So, I was thinking this Power Brick is going to come in handy.

But in hindsight, I think Carsten will agree to this, if we could have gifted it to Henny and Peter, just to keep them in, we definitely would have done it. But it wasn't an option.

Carsten: I don't know if it was even an option. It just happened so fast because I think the production was stopped for an hour before we started up again. And then the first scene after their building collapsed was actually the scene where we say goodbye to them.

And then it was later that they announced the winner, and I was quite surprised, and I was heartbroken. We had talked about it, and it could have been a very nice thing to do on show of course.

Angus: It gives you an advantage in challenges and Carsten and I agreed quite early on that we didn't want to use the advantage; we wanted it to be a level playing field whenever possible. It was something that we consciously decided, but we didn't realise that the Power Brick actually came with an ongoing ability.

David: That's really interesting. I'll say goodbye here.

Angus and Carsten: Thank you.

David: Bye now.

LEGO Masters NZ

LEGO Masters NZ screens three times a week each Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 pm, on TVNZ 2.

13 comments on this article

By AllanSmith in New Zealand, 20 Apr 2023 05:12

As a NZ AFOL since the mid 1980's I am enjoying this series. I enjoying collecting and creating LEGO models at a leisurely pace so would not enter the show.

By Reventon in Australia, 20 Apr 2023 06:22

There’s an Aussie version currently on tv too….Oh I forget. Hamish Blake is the host. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

By ozbrickcreator in Australia, 20 Apr 2023 06:50

Still nothing for Lego masters Australia? They are in the middle of the first ever Lego Grand Masters season and they still don't get any recognition?

By Miyakan in New Zealand, 20 Apr 2023 07:25

@ozbrickcreator said:
"Still nothing for Lego masters Australia? They are in the middle of the first ever Lego Grand Masters season and they still don't get any recognition?"

The only reason they have NZ coverage is because Flags NZ is a brickset contributor, and has contact with the producers, and thus access to the competitors. When someone in Australia can do that, I doubt brickset would object.

By Miyakan in New Zealand, 20 Apr 2023 07:28

Also, can we get some human proofreading on these. The number of wrong words is terrible.

By Huw in United Kingdom, 20 Apr 2023 08:58

@Miyakan said:
" @ozbrickcreator said:
"Still nothing for Lego masters Australia? They are in the middle of the first ever Lego Grand Masters season and they still don't get any recognition?"

The only reason they have NZ coverage is because Flags NZ is a brickset contributor, and has contact with the producers, and thus access to the competitors. When someone in Australia can do that, I doubt brickset would object."

Exactly.

By modelesqueBuilds in Germany, 20 Apr 2023 10:21

@Miyakan said:
" @ozbrickcreator said:
"Still nothing for Lego masters Australia? They are in the middle of the first ever Lego Grand Masters season and they still don't get any recognition?"

The only reason they have NZ coverage is because Flags NZ is a brickset contributor, and has contact with the producers, and thus access to the competitors. When someone in Australia can do that, I doubt brickset would object."

Such a shame though. The current Aussie season has got to be one of the best I've seen so far from ANY Lego Masters... potentially even better than the Australian season 2! It really feels like a missed opportunity on this site.

By MrBedhead in Switzerland, 20 Apr 2023 15:05

@Reventon said:
"There’s an Aussie version currently on tv too….Oh I forget. Hamish Blake is the host. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone."

I actually find him by far the best presenter of any of the LEGO Masters, and he is one of the reasons I find the Australia version so much better than any other. Maybe it is because I am not Australian and have a different perspective but I find him generally funny, and his presentation feel s way less forced than that of e.g. Will Arnett. Of course the contestants are also just some of the best out there. Scott and Owen, Joss and Henry, Gabby and Ryan, David and Gus... they all produce builds that sometimes are frankly stunning.

I watched the last US season early this year, and most episodes made me cringe. The Australian version is just miles ahead. Will Arnett shows complete ineptitude as a presenter, and the average level of the contestants was just... very average. The final result almost made me throw my shoe at my TV. That winning build must have been one of the most basic LEGO Masters wins ever. I thought: even I could build that.

By MrKoshka in United States, 20 Apr 2023 17:50

@MrBedhead said:
" @Reventon said:
"There’s an Aussie version currently on tv too….Oh I forget. Hamish Blake is the host. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone."

I actually find him by far the best presenter of any of the LEGO Masters, and he is one of the reasons I find the Australia version so much better than any other. Maybe it is because I am not Australian and have a different perspective but I find him generally funny, and his presentation feel s way less forced than that of e.g. Will Arnett. Of course the contestants are also just some of the best out there. Scott and Owen, Joss and Henry, Gabby and Ryan, David and Gus... they all produce builds that sometimes are frankly stunning.

I watched the last US season early this year, and most episodes made me cringe. The Australian version is just miles ahead. Will Arnett shows complete ineptitude as a presenter, and the average level of the contestants was just... very average. The final result almost made me throw my shoe at my TV. That winning build must have been one of the most basic LEGO Masters wins ever. I thought: even I could build that.
"

Really just get annoyed at all the general negativity when the US LEGO masters series is around and the publicity machine just reaches out to Brickset and all the other version lovers get so mad.

But, man, Will Arnett really does make me cringe so I bad I fear one day I’ll disappear inside of my own asshole like the house at the end of the poltergeist movie. And I’m a huge fan of his (Bojack was wonderful and Flaked was a gem and I always enjoyed Arrested Development).

Sometimes it takes a few days to get through an episode and they really are a chore. I do think he’s better now because he’s sort of a little more honest. But he is a terrible choice for a game show host.

He really just makes me sad most of the time. I feel bad for him.

By Miyakan in New Zealand, 20 Apr 2023 21:16

@MrBedhead said:
" @Reventon said:
"There’s an Aussie version currently on tv too….Oh I forget. Hamish Blake is the host. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone."

I actually find him by far the best presenter of any of the LEGO Masters, and he is one of the reasons I find the Australia version so much better than any other. Maybe it is because I am not Australian and have a different perspective but I find him generally funny, and his presentation feel s way less forced than that of e.g. Will Arnett. Of course the contestants are also just some of the best out there. Scott and Owen, Joss and Henry, Gabby and Ryan, David and Gus... they all produce builds that sometimes are frankly stunning.

I watched the last US season early this year, and most episodes made me cringe. The Australian version is just miles ahead. Will Arnett shows complete ineptitude as a presenter, and the average level of the contestants was just... very average. The final result almost made me throw my shoe at my TV. That winning build must have been one of the most basic LEGO Masters wins ever. I thought: even I could build that.
"

In regards to the quality of the builds, I do wonder if that has something to do with the range of bricks available to them. I know that a number of NZ contestants have remarked about the brickpit not always having the type of part you want. I haven't kept up with the last season of the US one, but for the NZ one, they do seem to be lacking in any sort of curved slope. Curved slopes would be essential to creating that polished unstudded look, and allow a much greater level of sculpting. So taking out even that one part category will have a significant impact on the style of build you can do.

By Block_n_Roll in New Zealand, 21 Apr 2023 01:28

@Miyakan said:
"Also, can we get some human proofreading on these. The number of wrong words is terrible."

My thought, too. It's eye-watering in places. I barely managed to fight my way through the first "interview" before I gave up. Appallingly bad.

By tm76 in Australia, 22 Apr 2023 23:21

Massively missed opportunity for brickset as the builds on the grand masters season of the Australian series have been exceptional. No one stepped up to be the local correspondent?

By PDelahanty in United States, 17 May 2023 06:57

@MrBedhead said:
"I watched the last US season early this year, and most episodes made me cringe. The Australian version is just miles ahead. Will Arnett shows complete ineptitude as a presenter, and the average level of the contestants was just... very average. The final result almost made me throw my shoe at my TV. That winning build must have been one of the most basic LEGO Masters wins ever. I thought: even I could build that."
I went to Legoland New York a week ago and saw the winning build in person. It's on display in the store right inside the park's front gate. I got a good look at it up close and let me tell you...it's basic. When I watched the show, I was underwhelmed that a brown bookshelf was the winning build. There's not much dynamic, colorful, or exciting about it. It's a bunch of stuff on a brown bookshelf. A big brown rectangle. It's like they realized late in the build that it's not a great build so they stuck some random bricks on the back and had one of the mini-builds busting out the side, but it's still just a big brown rectangle.

So, yeah. I agree.

When I went last year, they had the winning entry from Season 1 on display...in a dark corridor of the Legoland Hotel. It was sad how much disrespect they gave that build. It was no longer there as of last week. I didn't see it anywhere, so it's likely removed from the park and hotel.