Lift-off!

Lift-off! is a 1985 film by Marc Leidy. It is among the earliest known brickfilms created and is one of the first known amateur brickfilms to include sound and an original musical score. It is the only known completed stop-motion brickfilm by Leidy and was first made publicly available in January 2000, making it one of the earliest brickfilms available online. A higher quality transfer was made available in 2014.

Lift-off! later got Leidy the chance to work as a designer on the video game LEGO Alpha Team, which was released in 2000. Leidy created the original design of the character Tee Vee for the game, and this character design was included in the 2001 LEGO set 6775 Alpha Team Bomb Squad.

In 2000, Leidy was working on a CG brickfilm, Night of the Plastic, but this appears to have never been finished. Leidy released two brief CG brickfilms, We’re going to need a bigger wallet and Supermoon!, in September 2015, giving him one of the widest spans of brickfilming activity, at 30 years. He passed away in October 2015.

Plot
A man gets fuel put in his car and drives towards a space station. Upon arrival, he puts on an space suit and gets in to a spaceship. After a countdown, the ship takes off and flies in to space.

Crew

 * Marc Leidy - Director, Composer
 * Jon Mueller - Sound effects

Production
Lift-off! was shot over a couple of weeks in 1985 on Super 8 film using a Canon Auto Zoom 814E camera. It was animated at 9 frames-per-second. The original film reel was lost but the film survived on a Betacam SP tape transfer.

Leidy composed the soundtrack to the film himself using an Atari 800 home computer. He received help with additional sound effects from his friend Jon Mueller, whose moped can be heard as the sound of the main character's car.