Melting Point

Melting Point is an unfinished brickfilm project by Jonathan Vaughan. It was planned to be a 30-minute action drama film about a cop, Tony, who must try to stop the villainous Duman, who aims to melt the entire plastic world. It entered production in 2013 and was cancelled in November 2015, as it became clear that it was overambitious. It is a particularly well-known unfinished brickfilm, as it garnered hype from its Kickstarter campaign and due to being featured in the 2014 film A LEGO Brickumentary.

History
Jonathan Vaughan had been working on the script for Melting Point for over a year before announcing the project on May 27, 2013. He posted a Kickstarter campaign detailing the project and explaining that it would be 30 minutes long and epic in scale. The campaign video featured original animation plus Vaughan in live action, explaining his desire to build an entire city out of LEGO and upgrade his equipment for the project. The scene of Vaughan arguing with producers, refusing to use CGI and wanting to make "the best brickfilm ever made" is a reference to Vaughan's 2010 brickfilm Zombie: Genesis, which follows the making of a zombie film.

Filming of interior scenes began on May 31. Melting Point was a featured "Project We Love" on Kickstarter, and it reached its goal of $3,000 on June 26, 2013, with 180 backers pledging $3,346. Filming continued throughout 2013, and in November, Vaughan was contacted by people working on the film A LEGO Brickumentary, who were interested in showcasing Melting Point in production and interviewing Vaughan as an example of a hobbyist LEGO animator. A LEGO Brickumentary had a limited release in 2014 and a wide release in 2015, and Vaughan later indicated that the film seemed to give the impression that Melting Point was further along than it actually was.

Vaughan had initially hoped to release Melting Point in Summer 2014, but in early 2014, he injured his leg badly and was unable to stand, meaning he couldn't animate as the large sets required walking around. A single scene had its VFX and sound design finished so that it could be used as an example in A LEGO Brickumentary. Vaughan stated that he had shot almost 13 minutes of raw footage. Filming began again at the start of November 2014, but was slow due to increasing volume of Vaughan's real-life work. The next few months were spent filming a complex car chase sequence, whenever possible. In November 2015, Vaughan announced to Kickstarter backers that the film was cancelled, as it had become clear that it was far too ambitious and would take too many years complete. He offered to issue refunds to backers on request.

On August 6, 2017, Vaughan released a 5-minute brickfilm titled Where Is Melting Point?, in which a man embarks on a quest to find Jonathan Vaughan and discover what happened to the film. Vaughan used this film to explain to his YouTube viewers about the setbacks and cancellation, and also that his passion had shifted towards writing novels. He spoke in the comments of this film about planning to release some clips of what was shot for Melting Point, but he has not uploaded any videos since this one.