Superbot

Synopsis

In a house, at nightfall, a small domestic robot is doing his job. As he cleans the living room, he is attracted by the light outside.

As he approaches the window, he discovers a wonderful full moon surrounded by a starry sky that leaves him speechless. For a short moment he escapes from his duties.

After recovering from his emotions, he goes back to work. Suddenly the sound of the wind draws his attention and he discovers an open window. He runs towards it before being stopped by crying noises.

A baby monitor in the living room transmits the cries of a baby, which suddently affect the robot. The latter then discovers the baby’s cuddly toy left on the floor. He decides to postpone his dreams and go to comfort the child.

Poster of the short-film Superbot

Memorandum of intent

“The dream” at the root of the original idea…

At the origin of “Superbot”, there is the desire to deal with dreams. The ability of dreaming is an important gift, and we believe that those who have lost it must recover it at all costs.

The main character

To approach this subject, the idea of creating a robotic character was self-evident. By definition, our robot is not programmed to daydream, and it is in the course of a pure, sensitive and uninteresting action that he will go beyond his condition and reach this capacity.

We have had to face the challenge of mixing real-life shooting and 3D animation.

From his birth, drawing a parallel between our main character and the baby was the driving force behind the modeling. A head bigger than the body and chubby arms were the basis of our little robot.

Then modeling elements came to define and specify the condition of our character. The hands replaced by vacuum cleaners and the tank in the back, were designed to give him a humpy aspect and confine him in his condition of vacuum cleaner robot, unable to rise up.

Atmosphere and direction

At the same time, the reflection on the aesthetics of the film led us to choose a night atmosphere, directly related to a dreamlike atmosphere and to a soft image. We first staged a moonlight, mixing with rather hot domestic sources, before moving on to a pink light that we wanted directly connected to the dream.

Short lenses and macro shots

To stage our character, we wanted to use on one side short lenses to lose him in the immensity of the house, and thus put his scale in perspective with that of his environment, and on the other side macro shots to get as close as possible to his emotions.

Superbot is a short film that we wanted to be sensitive and dreamlike, and it is in this sense that we made these choices evolve throughout the conception of the film, whether in terms of narration, aesthetics, sound design and musical composition, which we wanted to be as expressive as possible.

With this film, we want to bring the audience into a dream, the projection of the stars at the end of the film, reminding us (perhaps) of our first film projection.

The technical team

The following people took part in the realization of Superbot :

Directors & Scriptwriters

Emmanuel Pierrat, Pierre-André Fontaine, Rémy Leroy

Assitant Director

Benoît Dagorne

VFX Supervisor, 3D Modelling/Animation/Composition

Pierre-André Fontaine

Chief Operators

Emmanuel Pierrat et Rémy Leroy

Decoration

Benoît Dagorne, Emmanuel Pierrat, Pierre-André Fontaine, Rémy Leroy

Editing

Emmanuel Pierrat, Pierre-André Fontaine, Rémy Leroy

Calibration

Emmanuel Pierrat

Sound Designer/Mixer

Rémy Leroy

Music

Akazera

Credits creator

Rémy Leroy

Communication manager

Caroline Bougit

Project manager

Géraldine Canonge

VFX Consultant

Christophe Moreau

VFX/image consultant

Frédéric Michaud

Scriptwriting Consultant

Jean-Marc Vigouroux, Benoît Dagorne

Sound design consultant

Jérémie Fruchet, Frédéric Michaud

Direction consultant

David Moreau, Frédéric Michaud