Fight Club was a brickfilming fad originating in late 2001 that saw brickfilmers creating animations of their signature figures fighting each other, in response to incidents on the Brickfilms.com forum. The originator of the format was an incognito Ben Brenninkmeyer, who encouraged continued responses via a designated Fight Club web page.[1] The format was revived a couple of times by other brickfilmers in years following the original crop of animations, most notably by Daniel "Idiotless" Ernst in 2004. Even if originating from minor spats, Fight Club brickfilms were generally seen as intended to be in good fun.[2]
History[]
Girls of Ocap Fight Club (2001 - 2002)[]
The original Fight Club emerged from an incident on the Brickfilms.com forums that took place towards the end of 2001. While Jared Gilbert was working on his film Macabre Manor, he shared a test clip of a digital ghost effect. An unfamiliar forum member going by the name "Britteny of Ocap" (in reference to forum regulars "Brian of Ocap" and "Anonymosity of Ocap", who knew each other in real life) took this clip and reposted it with the effect redone, which was not taken kindly to. An argument ensued, eventually leading to "Britteny of Ocap" posting animations depicting themselves killing the members who took issue with them. Other brickfilmers responded in kind by making animations of themselves killing Britteny of Ocap. As the forum posts from late 2001 and early 2002 are unavailable, the best account of the original incident comes from a summary posted on the forum in 2003 by Tyler "Drunken Farmer Ben" Hines.
"Fight club started with Jared making Macrabe Manor. He did a test reel with a ghost. Then, shortly after, someone redid it, and Jared got angry. So, several brickfilmers came to Jareds defense, because it was his work, and someone had copied it. This then mystery person, made a film, and it showed them (***** of OCAP. It was a girls name, with OCAP after it, making fun of Brian and Anomosity), killing the people who were defending Jared. From there, it was quite a bit of chaos, but there were some exelent films that came from it (Chcek out Valtsu's clip. It's awesome). The main thing of it, was people switching off killing whatever OCAP girl was around at the time, and then we would wait to see what this mystery person would come up with next. It usually consisted of another OCAP girl appearing, and killing off the person who killed the original one (I got killed by some sort of Jello cube :o ) The fun lasted for a bit, but then someone found out who it was (I forgot who, but they noticed that the stamps on a movie were the same as someone else). It was Bhbren (Spelling?), which is why the movies were actually pretty good, and well done."
- Tyler "Drunken Farmer Ben" Hines, 2003
The original Fight Club films were gathered on a web page by Ben Brenninkmeyer, who had secretly been behind the various "Girls of Ocap" personas. Listed here is the description of each film, along with the name of the person who made each one. Most of the films are missing, as they generally were not considered by their creators to be "real" films, and were not shared as widely as their other brickfilms.[3]
- "Britteny kills Brian of Ocap." X - by Ben Brenninkmeyer
- Tattoo of Death - "Brittenys kills Brian of Ocap and LegoGod." X - by Ben Brenninkmeyer
- A Grand and Merry Execution - "Britteny killed by Doug James of Shootin Bricks." X - by Doug James
- "Britteny killed by Brian of Ocap." X - by Brian Gould
- "Allison revenges Brittany's death." X - by Ben Brenninkmeyer
- Crunching Brittany - "My second and last response to the Forum Wars, made after 'Brittany' (or was it Allison?) killed me..." X - by Doug James
- Payback - "Allison killed by Drunken Farmer Ben." - by Tyler "Drunken Farmer Ben" Hines
- Fightclub: Valtsu vs Allison - "Allison killed by Valtsu." - by "Valtsu"
- "Allison the living dead girl of Ocap." X - by Ben Brenninkmeyer
- "Patrece of Ocap gets her revenge with her pet!" X - by Ben Brenninkmeyer
- Cup Of Champions League - "Patrece killed by Nubluez and Little P." - by Jonathan Neary
- "Ariele of Ocap decided to battle Little P hip hop style." X - by Ben Brenninkmeyer
- Scratch This - "Nubluez and Little P think they can kill DJ Ariele" - by Jonathan Neary
- "Ariele Of Ocap scratches back!" X - by Ben Brenninkmeyer
- "Ninja Nancy of Ocap" X - by Ben Brenninkmeyer
Idiotless Fight Club (2004 - 2005)[]
In early 2004, at a time when memory of the original Fight Club was still somewhat in the public consciousness, the idea was revived by forum member Daniel "Idiotless" Ernst. On January 22, 2004, Idiotless posted Fight Club: Don't Mess With Tetris, which depicted his signature figure killing "tub-o-legos"; a fellow brickfilmer who had been making a bit of a fool of himself on the forum not long beforehand. In the release thread of the Fight Club film, Idiotless stated "Oh, I don't hate you. Its good natured ribbing. :D I might do it to anyone here.... Keep on your toes, folks." In a departure from the original Fight Club format of waiting for films to be made in response, Idiotless included a message in his film encouraging other forum members to send him suggestions for who he should make subsequent Fight Club films about. On February 5, tub-o-legos posted the response film Fight Club: Don't mess with Tub-o-legos!.
On February 5, Idiotless posted Fight Club: Monkey Rush Hour in which he kills forum member Aaron, who, according to the film, "asked for it" (seemingly based on immature forum activity). On March 14, Idiotless posted Fight Club: TMNT, which he made in one hour. This time, the target was Jarrah White; a member well known for causing arguments about conspiracy theories. On March 20, a response to Idiotless' films came when Alan "Amped" Menhennet released Fight Club BFGSB ("Brick Filming Geeks Strike Back").
On April 14, Idiotless started a Fight Club Contest, inviting other brickfilmers to make an animation between 30 seconds and 3 minutes long in which they kill Idiotless' sigfig. The winner would get to appear in an Idiotless Fight Club brickfilm and choose who the victim would be (though it appears that this ultimately did not happen). The judges were Idiotless, Tom Dean, and Logan Wright. The deadline was May 30, and the contest received six entries:
- 1. Fight Club Contest - by "Dan"/"M!llerL!te"
- 2 (tied). Death by Psychological Abuse - by Robinson Wood
- 2 (tied). Operation Elimination - by Nathan "LGM" Dunlap
- 4. Mortigi Muta - by Ilmari Teekkinen
- 5. End Days - by Alan "Amped" Menhennet
- 6. Fight Club: Episode I - The Pantless Menace trailer - by "tub-o-legos"/"Bonzai" (the full film was released shortly afterwards)
On August 6, Idiotless released Fight Club: FAQ, targeting forum member "cycroboy" for repeatedly asking questions already answered by Brickfilms.com's Frequently Asked Questions section. On September 25, "Bonzai" (previously known as "tub-o-legos") released Fight Club: H.Y.P.E., about a forum troll known as "justin berry". On January 11, 2005, Idiotless released Fight Club: ASS, taking aim at an argumentative member fittingly known as "The Debatinator". Later in the year, a conversation between a handful of members about being annoyed by Aled Owen led to them coming up with Fight Club AO29, which was filmed by "Rolz" and released on September 12. The following day, Idiotless released Fight Club: EMO, in response to Tim H. complaining about a critical site review of his film Legless!. On September 16, "Darth" released Fight Club: EN, X about forum member "carlos". Fight Club releases trailed off after this, with the exception of the in-joke film Fight Club AOE by Rich Petty. This 10-second animation depicted Matt Gillan killing Graeme Allen, and was released on May 19, 2007.
BrickFilm Fights (2010 - 2012)[]
The BrickFilm Fights logo, by Rob Bauer
In 2010, after the community that had previously been on Brickfilms.com had established and moved to the website Bricks in Motion, a new variation on the Fight Club format was devised by Rob Bauer.[4] This thread was started to encourage brickfilmers to practice their fight scene animation, and it took the form of a forum game. People would reply by posting a picture of their sigfig and asking to be challenged. Once another brickfilmer challenged them, the two would each make an animation of their own sigfig defeating the other one in a fight. Other forum members would them vote on who won, based on who produced the better animation. The thread reached 66 pages in length, and spawned many fight animations from 2010 to 2012.
In later years, there have been other brickfilms that coincidentally arrive at more or less the same idea as Fight Club or BrickFilm Fights, but were made by people who would not have been influenced by any prior established wave of such films, for example Josiah vs Tasty: "Prologue" from 2016.