Sir Rob Rob

The Machine is a film I started years ago after a trip to Europe. I have always been obsessed with turn of the century arcades ( http://www.museemechanique.org/ ) and in germany and prague I went to a number of toy museums. They had amazing paper theaters and puppets and the story just developed out of that.
The animation is all stop-motion shot on a down-shooter with the exception of some CG that a friend Fred Ruff did of the canvas background being raised and lowered into frame. The farmer, king and man puppets are paper models with wire armature. The Machine puppet is a hybrid or ball-and-socket arms (leftovers from other puppets) and wire legs. I would have liked to have ball-and-socket armatures for everything, but wire is much more affordable.
The bulk of the film took 2 months to shoot and another 3 months to composite. I had the talented Sara Hulin animate some of the shots and Orland Nutt did a beautiful color correct for me. My friend Brian Kinkley did the sound design.
I am very proud that this is a true independent film. Bent Image Lab let me use their down shooter, and a few friends helped me get it all done, but there was no funding for this aside from my own half-empty pockets. I go to animation festivals as often as possible, and it’s always been hard for me (and fellow filmmakers) to see “independent” work that is school sponsored, government sponsored or studio created up against truly DYI independent films. When you do the work on your own, the production value is always less and it’s difficult for any viewer to separate the quality of film from the production quality.