Researchin’! Easter Eggs and Trivia
July 14, 2011 at 9:13 pm
For the Robot Film Festival, I created a short film in my lab here. Check it out:
Researchin’ is a short film showing the lives of those who inhabit a robotics research lab. In the current age, universities are among the the few places where people interact with robots on a daily basis. As they work together, the relationship can take on new unexpected dimensions.
While I don’t think I’ll be getting any calls from Sundance anytime soon, I did enjoy sneaking a few Easter Eggs into the production.
- Greg’s affiliation is listed as “Washington University in St. Louis Acting Conservatory and Medical School.” I actually know him and Kavita through the WashU Medical School musical. This past year, Greg was our Lieutenant Cioffi in Curtains, and Kavita and I were co-directors.
- Kavita’s affiliation says “Department of Mysteries, Hogwarts School of Medicine.”
- The actual text of the paper is my upcoming RoMan paper, “Human-Robot Interactions as Theatre”.
- Lewis is the only member of the production with his own Wikipedia page.
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- There’s a director cameo in the reflection of the glass. That happened a lot.
- This Tshirt comes to us from Google’s summer intern program 2007. The laptop bag (also mine) comes from IBM’s Extreme Blue internship program 2005.
- This comic is hanging on the door. Not put there for the movie though. It’s always there.
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- Right before I made this movie, I won some swag for the ROS Documentation Contest. Among the spoils were a I Heart Robotics Tshirt, the stickers seen at the desk, and another Diamondback poster (seen on the back wall).
- On the cabinet, you can see another Robot Film Festival sticker and a flyer for Death and the Powers a.k.a. the Robot Opera, which I just saw in Chicago.
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- The entire film was shot in Lopata Hall at Washington University in St. Louis (with the exception of the thesis defense scene, which was Bryan Hall). This balcony overhangs the dining area below my lab. It was supposed to be shot outside on the rooftop connected to my lab, with the great view of the St. Louis skyline. However, I decided it was going to be too hard to get Lewis up the three stairs to the rooftop door.
- The tshirt is Mario riding Yoshi.
- All the shots on the balcony were filmed at the end of shooting, with lots of wardrobe changes right behind that wall.
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- ROS Diamondback makes another appearance in tshirt form, thanks to the documentation contest again.
- Right in front of the monitor, there’s actually two little dinosaurs that usually reside on my desk. It’s a reference to Firefly. A deleted scene had Greg reenacting the whole clip.
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- The shirt Greg wears during his epiphany is a shirt made with robot fabric that my wife sewed for me. So of course that had to go in the movie.
- The article in his hand is the Robothespians article from New Scientist, which film festival organizer Heather Knight happens to be quoted in.
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- So here we are in the office I share with Dan. Cinetographically, it made more sense not to use my desk, so Dan was kind enough to forgive me for using his.
- This is the only point in the movie where anyone is typing on a computer that is actually on. Little did I know that while I was setting up the shots and working with Lewis, Greg was actually typing something up. Here is Greg’s unedited thesis.
- Note to self: Have section of thesis called “Various things that a Robot is not.”
- Lewis was a pretty good actor to work with, doing his own thing with minimal intervention. However, in this scene, he was being difficult (something about not having proper wireless signal) and I had to literally push him around in order to get him to act in this scene.
- Note: That still makes him easier to work with than some human actors I’ve worked with.
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Press Coverage: IEEE Spectrum
