Superbot

Synopsis

In a house after dark, a small household robot goes about its business. As it cleans
the living room, the light outside attracts him.

As he approaches the window, he discovers a marvellous full moon accompanied by a starry sky that leaves him speechless. For a brief moment he escapes from his chores.

After recovering from his emotions, he went back to work. Suddenly the sound of the wind caught his attention
his attention and he discovers an open window. He ran towards it, only to be stopped by the sound of crying.

A baby monitor in the living room transmits the cries of a baby, which do not leave the robot unmoved. The robot
The robot discovers the child’s cuddly toy on the floor. It decides to put its dreams on hold and set off to console the child.

Superbot short film poster

Poster of the short film Superbot

Note of intent

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

Superbot was born out of a desire to talk about dreams. The ability to dream seems to us to be an important gift that we must regain at all costs if we have lost touch with it.

The main character

To tackle this subject, the question of having a robotic character was an obvious one. In essence, our robot is not programmed to daydream, and it is through a pure, sensitive and pointless action that it will overcome its condition and achieve this ability.

The challenge was to combine live action and 3D animation.

From the moment he was born, drawing a parallel between our main character and the baby was the driving force behind the modelling. A head larger than the body and chubby arms were the basis of our little robot.

Modelling elements were then added to define and specify our character’s condition. The hands, replaced by hoovers, and the tank on his back were designed to give him a hunchbacked appearance and confine him to his condition as a hoover robot, unable to rise.

Atmosphere and staging

At the same time, our reflections on the aesthetics of the film led us to choose a night-time atmosphere, directly linked to a dreamlike mood and a soft image. We began by using moonlight, mixed with rather warm domestic sources and then moved on to a pink light that we wanted to be directly connected to the dream.

Short focal lengths and macro shots

To set the scene for our character, we wanted to use short focal lengths to lose him in the immensity of the house, and so put his scale into perspective with that of his environment, and 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 was with this in mind that we developed these choices throughout the conception of the film, whether in terms of narrative, aesthetics, sound design or musical composition, which we wanted to be as expressive as possible.

With this film, we want to take the spectator away into a dream, the projection of the stars at the end of the film reminding us (perhaps) of our first cinema experience.

The technical team

Superbot was produced by :

Directors & Scriptwriters

Emmanuel Pierrat, Pierre-André Fontaine, Rémy Leroy