Trash, Dance & Robots

In winter 2021, we decided to make a film as a group of three under the guidance of our professor Jürgen Schopper about a robot whose purpose in life is to pick up rubbish. A lot has happened in the meantime: the robot is now controlled by an old lady and can – surprise! – dance very well. We have spent many enjoyable, stressful and also funny days at the HFF with our robot and the old lady. The original idea resulted in a four-minute animated film. We – three visual effects students (Valentin Dittlmann, Hannes Werner, Felix Zachau) at the University of Television and Film in Munich – developed, realised and completed this film in the course of our first year of study.

The year is 2029, we live in an ageing society. What will the world look like when younger people can no longer pay for the pensions of older people? Will they still have to work? Who will look after them? These are the kinds of questions we asked ourselves when creating the story. In essence, it's about an old, frail lady who controls a robot for a living, which she uses to collect rubbish. A bit like modern bottle collecting. This woman, or rather her robot, then finds a tape recorder, which rekindles her love of music and dance. Instead of the boring, repetitive work, the robot she controls dances. She uses her working hours, somewhat subversively, to experience again what her situation now prohibits. In order to finally arrive at this idea, we first collected a large pool of ideas and small stories, roughly sketched them out and expanded them.

Realisability was not yet a decisive factor at this stage. It was more about generating lots of ideas quickly. Thanks to this pool ...


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