The Cleaners

The Cleaners is an 2017 crime brickfilm by Nathan Wells and Zach Macias. It was originally intended to be produced within two days, but ended up taking two years on and off.

Plot
A man, hiding from two hitmen, resides in a motel, concealing a photograph of the two men dumping a body in the river. In order to take down their operation, he promises to hand in the photo and arranges someone to head over to the motel to collect it from him. He phones them up and tells them to hurry up, when he hears a knock on the door. He looks through the viewing hole to see who it is, just before being shot dead.

Ernie and Bert, the two hitmen, break the door open. As they walk into the room, they toss a coin to see who will do what. Bert removes any evidence of the crime scene, and Ernie searches for the photograph, whilst a mysterious onlooker watches from the balcony on the other side of the motel.

Bert rips up the blood stained carpet. Ernie finds a £100 bill hidden in a Bible, and sneaks it into his jacket pocket. After searching trough the room, he takes a break, and tries turning the tv on with the remote, but it won't work. He looks at the back of the remote and finds the photo, concealed inside.

Once they find it, they leave immediately.

After they have left, a cleaner heads over to the room, to find a patch of the carpet missing, and the photograph, which the hitmen accidentally left behind.

As she picks up the photo, the mysterious man who watched the hitmen from the balcony, walks into the room, takes the photo from her and walks away.

Cast

 * Zach Macias as Ernie
 * Nathan Wells as Bert
 * Joseph Hayden as Victim
 * Jay Silver as Voice

Crew

 * Nathan Wells - Writer, Animator, Editor, Director,
 * Zach Macias - Writer, Animator, Editor, Director,

Production
After having collaborated via the internet for many years, Nathan Wells and Zach Macias first collaborated on LEGO animation in real life for the animated sequences of Bricks in Motion: The Documentary. Afterwards, they decided that they should co-produce more films in real life. To this end, they came up with the "Brick Mind Animation Challenge"; a challenge to themselves to create a brickfilm from start to finish within 48 hours, inspired by the Twenty-four Hour Animation Contest. From March 12 - 14, 2016, they worked on a brickfilm while livestreaming the entire event to Twitch. Though the majority of the animation was completed during this time period, the film was not completed within the two days. Further progress was slowly made between other projects, including another co-creation, Star Wars: Rogue Unit, which was not a brickfilm. The Cleaners ended up spending over 2 years in production.

The Cleaners is the first brickfilm co-directed by Wells and Macias since Feel Great in 2006, though in the meantime they did work together on the community project The Day Brickfilms.com Crashed, the double feature Diatribe/Malapropos, and the animated sequences of Bricks in Motion: The Documentary.