'François Lego' stars in Quebec City couple's stop-motion tribute to health-care workers

Like thousands of Quebecers, Evelyne Paré and Simon Blanchet have been trying to find ways to pass the time while in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead of doing puzzles or baking, the Quebec City couple decided to make a stop-motion video, with nearly 5,000 pieces of Lego — a tribute to the province's health-care and other essential workers.

The result is a film that runs just under two minutes, starring Quebec Public Health Director Horacio Arruda, Health Minister Danielle McCann and Premier François Legault, a.k.a. François Lego.

"The pun didn't even come to us until later," said Blanchet. "It was perfect."

The couple has a shared passion for Lego, which they discovered soon after they met. It's taken them to Lego stores all around the world, on their travels.

Paré, a hairdresser, and Blanchet, a restaurant manager, have both temporarily lost their jobs because of the government shutdown of non-essential businesses.

While they had tried "basic and sketchy" video projects with Lego blocks in the past, they'd never done anything quite like this, said Blanchet.

With time on her hands, Paré started working on a story line about elderly people and health-care workers in seniors' homes.

Glued to their television each day at 1 p.m. to hear the premier's update on the COVID-19 situation in Quebec, the duo decided the news conference would serve "as the cement that ties the different scenes together," said Blanchet.

A voiceover using snippets of speeches by Legault carries the story, as he thanks Quebecers for staying home, and invites people to "call their grandmothers."

Precisely 4,979 lego pieces and 1,835 photos were used to recreate the scenes of a busy family at home, hospital rooms, research labs and restaurant kitchens.

"We wanted to reflect the work being done by researchers in hospitals," Blanchet said.

"We wanted to have fun, but we also wanted to send out some positivity through all this," said Paré.

Look for the sign-language interpreter

It took around 10 days to produce the entire film — five to six days to take 1,835 photos of each character and another five days to edit, said Blanchet.

"We wanted people to have to watch it more than once to see all the details," he said. There is even the sign language interpreter at the bottom of the screen, relaying Legault's message to people with hearing impairments.

"We really didn't want to neglect any detail," said Paré.

About half of their combined Lego collection was used in the making of the movie, said Paré, who borrowed from Lego sets saved from her childhood to find figures portraying the essential workers.

Capturing this chapter of the pandemic in a stop-motion film will allow them to remember it long after the Lego blocks have been taken apart, Paré said.

"It's going to be a souvenir for us that won't gather dust like the other Lego sets we have in the house!"