Amateur video artists have some great tools at their disposal to hone their filmmaking skills without actors or a studio. Two of these methods that have been used effectively in online video are Brickfilms and Sims movies. Brickfilms are simply stop-motion animated legos, and the Sims movies are made using programs that manipulate the Sims computer game.
Brickfilms have been on youtube for a while now, and the cool thing about them is that anyone with some patience can make them. Kids, filmschool students and amateurs can all shoot their own film with colorful characters and sets. You can find quite a variety of great short films by searching for "Brickfilms." I believe that the reason for the great variety and quality of these films is because of the arduous stop-motion filming process. The intense amount of time it takes to shoot a brickfilm means that it has to be planned out beforehand, and that the artist really has to want to make the film. One of my favorite brickfilms is called "Cognizance" and it may even choke you up a bit. Check it out:
The Sims movies are also cool because you can really "direct" the characters. Unlike a brickfilm, where you must precisely move each lego piece, Sims characters have a range of actions that they can perform like dancing, laughing, flirting, etc. Thus when "directing" a Sims movie you create the set, choose the camera angles, props, etc, but then you just tell the Sim what to do and it performs the action. Like the brickfilms, this has produced some cool little films where artists are practicing their craft. With Brickfilms and Sims movies, we finally get some online video that breaks away from the viral videos and punchlines of youtube.
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