Animal

The original idea behind this short was born out of the need to create something as large as possible with as little as possible at my immediate disposal, a fools errand really. At the time, I was interning at a production company and could not stop thinking about helming a production of my own. The principle concept of a man stuck in a room with a machine actually came into my thick skull while working at this company, The Director’s Bureau, my saving grace of internships that re-instilled some sort of faith back into a business that had chewed me up and spit me out countless times over.
The Bureau, as we called it (Roman Coppola’s production house) is chalked full of, not only talented and amazing people, but great vintage quirky contraptions, one being an old vending machine that sat near the front desk. It just sat there in a peculiar state of malfunction, everyone knew it was there, but nobody ever really acknowledged it. It was just a permanent fixture unworthy of further attention. That was until the day I was tasked to figure out how it worked, to learn its language. The image of its constant blinking red button has been forever seared into my mind, telling me to get off my ass and make something for myself.
I took up the task and did just that. After learning the ways of the machine, I delved into the idea that became Animal. The original idea went from comedy, to black comedy, and finally to straight drama. It’s through these revisions that I discovered what I was really interested in showing people, an existential game of chess between man and machine. I wanted to create a surreal space where man seemingly becomes the less sophisticated caged animal ruled by an emotionless survival driven machine, but through the process the two begin to bleed together. Somewhere in space in time where Bergman's Death and Kubrick's Hal become one.

"Animal" follows a man, Chris Zylka (The Amazing Spiderman, The Leftovers), who finds himself trapped in a white room with a machine that gives him everything it thinks he needs, but is that enough to keep him satisfied? This is both, Zylka and I's, first short film debut to be considered and screened at film festivals worldwide.