That was the final piece in the story that goes, "Oh, wait a minute, I've become this thing. And for us, that was sort of the locking moment. OLDENBURG: It's funny, because even the billboard is the final piece of the billboard is coming together. 'Cause for a long time, he was just on the train staring out into the field and sort of analyzing the situation, but without much to do other than sort of go back into himself. Why is he doing this today? Why today?" And then when he sees himself as a part of this facade, that was the trigger point.įABIAN: Yeah, that was totally the missing piece, that billboard. And then he got home and saw a pepper and then it's like, "Well, this doesn't feel right. He was just seeing and looking out the window with a distant stare and lethargic and introspective and all that. There's a moment where he's on the train and he's riding home, and we weren't necessarily doing the epiphany there. We had almost a finished product, but still there was something that wasn't feeling true near the last quarter of the story and it was related to the epiphany for our lead character. OLDENBURG: There was an "Aha!" moment we also had quite late in the process, as well. How many versions of the story did you go through? How did you settle on the scarecrow concept? And that's the thing: Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. When I was a kid, I always tried to draw the craziest looking science-fiction alien and then my dad would pull out an encyclopedia and show me some sea urchin, and it was crazier than anything you could come up with. They were like, "You know, these things are more like a Rube Goldberg machine than the way you're thinking about them and they're not that far off from even your wildest interpretation." And after digging further into documentaries and behind-the-scenes footage of food processing and how much energy goes into it, you realize, "Wow, we need to push it even further." OLDENBURG: At one point - I think in our design of the factory, specifically, we weren't doing it crazy enough.
What kind of notes would they send back to you? In all the years in our experience of working in commercial production, we've never seen anything quite like this.įABIAN: Yeah, we were constantly pinching ourselves. Everybody on this team is like, "This is unheard of." Every time they went back to us, saying, "You know, guys, maybe we should change this," it was like, they were so dead-on correct and right. OLDENBURG: Limbert and I - for the past 15 years of our commercial experiences, we've never had a client like this, ever, be so collaborative and so on-point with their notes.
Was the numberlys an influence for the movie robots how to#
They were just leaving it up to us to set up how to say it. So that's been a lot of fun to watch and see.įABIAN: They were very clear about what they wanted to say. Gosh, the response to the game was the biggest question mark. I know Chipotle really wanted that to happen and we were curious whether it was gonna be very negative or not, but it's definitely spreading the way we thought it would spread as far as the conversations that are being had, whether it be about food, whether it be about the production of the film itself, or, more importantly, the game. Not only just about the film - that's interesting and we love that - but the subconversation that's going on about the intent of the film.
LIMBERT FABIAN: It's amazing how the dialogue is just incredibly fast. And watching the accelerating rate of change and the amount of people downloading and watching on YouTube. What has it been like to watch the response?īRANDON OLDENBURG: It can be addictive to see the response that something like this has, especially in the first 24 hours.
People are really talking about this "Scarecrow" film. We rang up Moonbot Studios for a Q&A with Brandon Oldenburg and Limbert Fabian, the short's co-directors, to talk about their inspiration for the film, the production process, what it was like to work with Chipotle, landing Fiona Apple to sing that "Willy Wonka" song, and who almost wound up in the recording booth instead.
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