Robbie is a short film, made up entirely of NASA archival footage. It is moving, stirring, sad. The director Neil Harvey explains that he downloaded 10 hours of footage, started to arrange it and see what storyline and characters emerged. This film is the result of that process.
Set 6000 years the future, Robbie charts the existential reflections of an aging robot drifting alone through space on the last of his battery life. About the film: I am Neil Harvey, a director and editor from Sydney, Australia. This video is a short film I created as an anniversary present for my girlfriend a few months ago. The film-making process involved downloading about 10 hours of footage from the NASA archives and compiling a list of shots which resonated with me at some level. I did this over about 2 or 3 months when I had the spare time. From there, I put these selected shots on an editing timeline and watched them back until characters and narratives began developing in my mind. That is when i met Robbie. A lot of people have read 'Robbie' as a rather sad story. My personal reading is that I find it to be a bit more uplifting, perhaps even celebratory. While it was not my intention to have "a message", I was certainly interested in the way we confront death and the issue of not ever waking up again. I also felt that by transposing such themes onto an AI character, it would provide a much more compelling vehicle through which to explore these ideas than if we were watching a human protagonist. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I definitely find value in my life by occasionally thinking about how lucky I am that I was actually born at all. I guess this is why I find the film to be more cathartic than depressing. My biggest thank you to all the talented film-makers and animators at NASA. Also, thank you to Jason Sondhi and the rest of the Vimeo team for their continued support of independent film-makers across the world. More information about 'Robbie' can be found at: http://www.pausefest.com.au/neil-harvey-aus