Don't Be a Jerk It's Christmas is a 2009 music video brickfilm by Garrett Barati. It is a music video to the song of the same name as performed by Tom Kenny in the role of SpongeBob Squarepants. It was created in collaboration with Nicktoons and The LEGO Group as part of Barati's prize for winning the Built By Me Movie Contest.[1]
Production
Barati received the opportunity to produce the film as a result of his film Play Nice winning the 2008 Nicktoons and LEGO Built By Me Movie Contest, which had a grand prize of $25,000 funding for a new brickfilm to be produced in conjunction with Nicktoons and the LEGO Group.
Don't Be a Jerk It's Christmas was actually the third idea attempted by Barati, Nicktoons and LEGO. Originally, they were planning to create a LEGO video for the SpongeBob Squarepants theme song, and Barati had created storyboards and early builds. However, lawyers decided that kids might confuse it with the actual show, and despite objections, the project was scrapped. The second idea was scrapped when it was decided that Barati's chosen song should be replaced with the newer Christmas song.[2] Barati did eventually create an official LEGO SpongeBob Squarepants theme song video in 2012.
Release information
The song in the film was first released on July 14, 2009 as a bonus track on the re-release of the album SpongeBob's Greatest Hits, and a shorter version was later used in the 2012 SpongeBob Squarepants episode It's a SpongeBob Christmas!, with different accompanying visuals.
Barati's own YouTube upload of the film is slightly longer than the original upload by LEGO as Barati had originally included a brick-built Nicktoons logo that had to be removed for the official release as Nicktoons had recently changed their logo.[1][3]
After the creation of the film, Barati was contacted to produce more brickfilms directly for The LEGO Group, starting with The Fastest and Funniest LEGO Star Wars story ever told.