Eerie Sci-Fi Short Film ROBBIE Made with Existing NASA Footage

An Australian filmmaker by the name of Neil Harvey sent us a wonderful eerie sci-fi short film he created called Robbie, and he used a lot of footage from NASA to create it. The story is set 6000 years in the future, and it charts the existential reflections of an aging robot drifting alone through space on the last of his battery life. It actually ended up being a really interesting short. 

Here's a note from the filmmaker:

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.

It's actually very cool to watch this footage, because there's some really cool looking stuff in the NASA archives. I would actually love to see more. Watch the film and let us know if you like it or not!

Robbie - A Short Film By Neil Harvey from Neil Harvey on Vimeo.