CBH Blog

Two of our B'nai Mitzvah students created a truly unique, and hilarious D'var Torah... using legos to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt.
Eli Abeita gave this intro. Following the introduction is the video.

D'var Movie Introduction
by Eli Abeita

I decided to make a movie for my d'var because it hadn't been done before, and I like to make movies. Plus, I thought this Torah portion was interesting because in the Torah, not only Moses and Aaron perform wonders, the Egyptians do too. In fact, they turn their staffs into snakes and summon frogs as if this is just part of their job for the Pharoah. And it turns out that, according to the midrash, they play a big part in what happened during the Exodus and after, including the creation of the Golden Calf.  I also felt there was a parallel between this story and current events that might add another layer of meaning.

JP (Lockwood), my bnai mitzvah partner liked the idea too, so he joined the project and stayed dedicated to it until the bitter end. Coming to my house nearly every Saturday and Sunday for five months. In fact, this is probably the first d'var to take five months and hundreds of hours.   

First we wrote a script, then a screenplay. Next both Kellie (Scheer) and Rabbi Josh weighed in. There was re-writing.  Then we got the props, built the sets and started filming. Before every scene, we had to plan out the action, set up the camera, the lighting, and so on.

Each step a character took required 3 moves – 3 separate tiny adjustments to the figures, three separate pictures. Filming alone took three months of Sundays and often Saturdays too.

For the voice recording, we shanghai'd our friends to play the different characters.

For the editing, we had to go through every picture in 21 scenes – some with over 500 pictures;  remove the ones with our hands in them or other accidents, put them in the right order, loop sets of frames to make the pictures match the words, add the sound, export each scene, then import it into a different program to stitch them together and add sound effects and music. Editing alone took up all of my Winter break and involved many eight hour days.

We hope you enjoy it.
(Runs 18:47 minutes - so grab some popcorn and enjoy!)