I'm an enormous film fan and when I was growing up everybody had a big bucket of Lego or knew somebody who did," says film student Alex Eylar, 22, of Oakland, Calif.
The aspiring screenwriter began collecting LEGOs when he was five years old and now he boasts somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 pieces in his collection, which he now uses to recreate classic movie scenes.
"I make all my Lego projects at a table in the corner of [my] living room. I've got five of those big plastic drawer bureaus, filled with pieces divided by color, style, function. For smaller projects, the build can be finished in less than half an hour. It all depends on the amount of detail and the scale of the scene," he tells Paul Andrews of PacificCoastNews.com.
Eylar, who is studying for his Master's degree in screenwriting at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., says it's the photography that takes the longest because he needs to get the effects right - and that could lead to days of work. Although he says the James Bond scene only took him a few minutes.
And none of the LEGO pieces are custom made. "I'm too much of a purist," he says, preferring to utilize only original blocks.
But what happens to these miniature movie sets after he's finished photographing them?
"After each set is built and photographed I tear it down. I can't afford to keep them built - I need the pieces," he says.
