LEGO Masters NZ - Season 2 - Semi Final
Posted by FlagsNZ,
LEGO Masters NZ, Season 2 finished a few weeks ago. Episode 8 was the semi-final where three teams competed the remaining two positions in the final.
In New Zealand, you can still see all the episodes from seasons 1 and 2 on the TVNZ website.
As some of the contestants have been unavailable to be interviewed after their respective episodes aired on TV, it has taken a bit of time to catch up with all the teams to enable the interviews to be published in the elimination order.
In this article, I interviewed the team who were eliminated at the end of the semi-final.
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
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David: Thank you for joining me today to do this interview.
Rachel: No worries.
David: What a great show LEGO Masters NZ has been.
Jason: The builds have been fabulous.
David: One comment is that they have packed a lot of punch into three weeks.
Jason: Absolutely.
Rachel: I cannot agree more with that.
Jason: We understand. We have had to respond to all the social media three nights in a row!
David: Unlike other LEGO Masters series with one show a week dragged out for three months.
The show that we need to catch up to is the semi-final, where you got eliminated.
I want to discuss your last three episodes: The one where you smashed the ball through the house, and your Wonky Donkey build.
Let's start by talking about the house challenge. The challenge was that you had to build the house where there had to be a specific reason why the house was being demolished. Talk to me about your reason why it had to be destroyed.
Rachel: It was a play on the classic birthday party where there's all the sweet things, the cakes, the lollies, and everyone goes nuts for them. And on the side, you've got that plate of carrots and fruit that nobody wants to touch.
So we took that idea and made a candy-themed house with an angry carrot that was most upset for not being invited to the party. And our inspiration for this was all the children watching and channelling into that fun, party, lolly, candy-house kind of thing.
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Jason: Ice cream, people.
Rachel: Yes. So much fun.
David: It came through that you guys have so much fun. There are two parts to this: you would have a lot of fun - there was an awful lot of laughter at your table, especially from you, Rachel - but I also saw this forlorn look, "I can't do this," type of stress. Possibly more from Jason. They focused on that during the show. You looked pretty lost, Jason, or appeared to be overwhelmed a few times.
Jason: From the candy smash episode until the Wonky Donkey episode, I was still recovering from COVID. I got hit very hard with COVID, and the schedule became heavily compressed through those episodes. I didn't have an opportunity to recover properly.
Rachel: He became really tired. The thinking process became a lot tougher from that point. However, that whole thing of Jason being quite unsure, Jason is naturally unsure of things and being put under pressure and in front of cameras. It just really highlighted it for him. But did they show the times when he was nailing it, too?
David: That came through. Once you got your inspiration. The two of you shared that. Jason, when you were struggling, Rachel picked up the pace and gave you a bit of a boost, and then you went off! You weaved your strengths with each other throughout your building processes.
Rachel: Yes. That sounds about right. About how we do it.
Jason: We're a team, full stop. When helping each other, we give each other inspiration, even if the inspiration is weird. Like I do the opposite of what the advice is given.
Rachel: Ha ha! That often happens. I will tell Jason something, and he will do the opposite!
I'm telling you that when Jason is really unsure of a situation until he has other people feeding into it, he doesn't really know what he wants. And then when someone tells him the opposite of what he would actually like, he's like, "Ah, now I know where I wanted to go with that."
But in a lot of the episodes, either Jason or I would struggle at some point until the other one was able to inspire or give direction to that person. There were definitely moments of us being lost.
Jason: Like in episode 2, we were on the same plan from the get-go.
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When we were both on the same page, it was fantastic. When we were both a little bit out of sync . . . that became tricky.
Rachel: Most of the time, we managed to nail it.
Jason: I am absolutely proud of everything we made. Most of the things we made are things we wouldn't have ordinarily made ourselves. That came across in Episode Four when Dai came up, and he said, "What are you motorising in this one, Jason?" And I answered, "Actually, Dai. I don't need to motorise everything." Which is highly unusual for me.
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David: Let us talk about the ball race – Episode 7 - where the ball travels through the prehistoric scene.
Jason: Hands down, that was my favourite challenge.
David: If you've been to as many brick shows as you and I have been to, the Great Ball Contraption is always one of the most popular exhibits for children, and they stay there for hours watching the balls go around.
Jason: Not just children. Adults are just as guilty of it, too! I was thrilled we were using the larger balls because those small ones are so pedantic. When you turn your back on a contraption for three seconds, sometimes it gets jammed.
David: Is that ball part of the new Mindstorms set? And did I see you using the new Mindstorm hub in some of your builds? So, they were some of the parts Robin Sather brought in for the second season.
Jason: Robin got those balls in, especially for that challenge.
David: I'm a Mindstorms nerd, myself. I've got lots of Mindstorm EV3 sets and a couple of the new ones, too.
As it was pointed out during the show, I was impressed that you had that skeletal ribcage that was entirely superfluous for your requirements because the ball would have stayed on the roller coaster track without that support.
Rachel: Well, actually, no! The ball definitely needed that because of our curves with the roller coaster track. It needed something to stop the ball from falling off the edges with those horn pieces. They really helped the ball to stay on so that we ensured that we had consistency throughout the track that we had running.
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Jason: There was almost an S-bend running through one of the points that needed a little bit to stop the ball from flying off.
David: You wanted to guarantee that it was always in motion.
Jason: We were told to make it reliable and make it consistent.
Rachel: And we didn't want to have the ball falling off and stopping in our model because it was, as well, the first one in the line-up, and it would have been terrible if the ball had come off!
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David: Alright, and now we come to the Wonky Donkey episode. That was your favourite challenge, Rachel?
Rachel: I loved him! He was really tricky. At the beginning of the episode, initially, I was really excited. The Wonky Donkey . . . I love the story . . . read it to the children a million times when they were younger, and we got that to build, and then I realised that, "Oh no! I have to build a donkey. "
I probably spent the first two hours of that episode just shaking in fear from the fact that I had to sculpt an animal, and this comes back to my advice in the first interview: Don't ever go onto LEGO Masters without trying to sculpt animals, first!
David: You pulled it off quite well. I quite liked your build.
Rachel: Thank you.
David: I liked the "Hee Haw!" words moving back and forth.
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Jason: I had so much fun building that.
David: It looked to me as a viewer watching the show that looking at the images that the three teams had to use from the three stories, the Wonky Donkey images had the least background to work from; There was a couple of characters and the big words in the centre whereas the Andrew and Harry had the tower and a fire truck and Carsten and Angus had little digger scene.
Rachel: We had to do a lot of thinking about how to fill that up. Sometimes that blank space can also work to your benefit because then if there's blank space and there are only one or two items to focus on, you've only got those couple of things to build and just to make sure that they are excellent.
Whereas if you've got a scene with lots of things in it, you really have to make sure that your key character actually stands out. So we had the benefit of the fact we had a donkey and we had a bird that we had to make.
Jason: One at a time.
Rachel: And that was it.
Jason: . . . and a whole lot of grass!
David: It's like one of those LEGO builds where you are assembling the same thing sixty-four times, you know, a repetitive build, and you just line up all the parts, and you click them into place in a sequence.
Jason: That is the funny thing. In our season when we did lots of repetitive things. It didn't come across, but in the likes of LEGO Masters Australia, Brickman would say, "That's smart because you've designed it once and just made a heap of them!"
David: Now that the series has finished, are you talking on social media? How has this impacted your LEGO community and your social media experience?
Jason: The support has been overwhelmingly positive.
Rachel: It's been outstanding. We've been really humbled by the messages and support we've had from people out there. I just definitely need a break after three intense days for three weeks. But it's been outstanding.
Jason: As Rachel said. It has been very humbling. We've had people contact us from periods of our life that we haven't been in contact with them in many years, which has been really cool to be able to connect with people again.
David: To be fair. You have been broadcast to a nation's living rooms for three intense weeks. You cannot miss that this is one of the most popular shows in that time slot (7:30 to 8:30 pm). And then, after dinner, everyone sits down to watch Seven Sharp or Shortland Street or whatever TV, and then there's LEGO Masters NZ, and you're in the front room across the nation. And all the LEGO followers in New Zealand know you guys, as you have a quite a profile.
Jason: We have been visible in the LEGO community and very vocal in supporting it. The LEGO community means an awful lot to us.
David: What is your next LEGO challenge?
Rachel: Our next LEGO challenge? Our Lego challenge is coming up with an idea for a build for the upcoming Christchurch Brick Show, which is two months away, and we have no idea what we are going to do now.
Jason: We've got a steampunk event to attend. I want to create a steampunk display to take to the Oamaru Steampunk Festival on the Saturday of King's Birthday long weekend.
David: Is that event for LUG 4/2?
Jason: No. This is part of the Steampunk HQ.
Rachel: Oamaru is well known for its steampunk festival every year, and on Saturday, we're going to be there. There are going to be a couple of other builders also. Amy and Adam from LEGO Masters NZ Season One will be there with some Steampunk things. And we'll be there with some displays and with all our LEGO for everyone to play with.
David: And when it comes to that and the Christchurch Brick Show, you will be the key celebrities at those events.
Jason: There will be at least four LEGO Masters NZ Season Two teams at the show. And there is a selection of Season One teams going to be there as well.
David: That's pretty cool.
Rachel: I think it would be such a neat gathering, and we are looking forward to it.
David: Thanks for catching up with me today
Rachel and Jason: Thank you.
David: Bye for now.
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LEGO Masters NZ
LEGO Masters NZ episodes can be viewed on the TVNZ 2 website.
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5 comments on this article
the australian version is so much better. the builds are higher quality anf the contestants are better in my opinion. you should see the finale winning build. its incredible and one of the best models ive ever seen! the runner up model was also amazing
"Whoops! Looks like you're trying to watch from outside of New Zealand. Our videos are only available to watch within New Zealand due to rights issues."
Anyone savvy know a workaround?
So is Lego Masters Australia not getting any articles??
I liked their build on the ball race in episode 7 and to be honest, I completely agrre on them being eliminated for the Wonky Donkey build. It just lacked the bulk/mass and finesse or technique that the other competitors brought. And although in our house we didn't agree with Robin's judging on the finale build (although we thought the winning team deserved it on all their other builds in this season combined) we very much enjoyed this season. Yes, it's more on a budget, and yes, the builds maybe a bit less imposing... but the brickpit is smaller, than in AU. The sheer amount of AFOLS in NZ is smaller than in AU and still people come up with great ideas. Sometimes the limited amount of available brick can impose an extra challenge in itself. Comparing the AU to NZ editions is like comparing my country's edition (Netherlands) to the US edition of LEGO Masters... it just can't be compared in any way. We're hoping to see a 3rd season.
@Retroblox77 said:
"So is Lego Masters Australia not getting any articles??"
They've addressed it before. Supposedly there is no Aus communication with the production company or no Australian Brickset member of staff to facilitate interviews.