One Rat Short: Lovely CGI Animated Story

One Rat Short is a lovely CGI-animated film by writer and director, Alex Weil. In it, we follow the story of an alley rat and his encounter with his true love in a laboratory controlled by an autonomous robot. It’s a charming film and we are looking forward to more from Weil.

As described by Weil, One Rat Short is a work of love created by Charlex Films. It began as part of the effort to grow the company’s commercial CG department but eventually became much more than that. Originally, it was called labratz and as the title might suggest it mimicked the look and sensibility of work already pioneered by other studios. As it evolved it took on a life of its own and became “our film.” From the start we decided not to use anthropomorphic animation. We decided it would take place in two worlds: one so gritty, grimy and dark that the viewer needs to peer into the screen in order to make out the images and the other a sterile white world so brightly lit that you feel the need to turn your head away from the screen. It was also important to me to keep the film looking as real as possible. One of the techniques we used was to give a lot of the camera work a hand-held feel and to keep it a little behind the action so that the scenes didn’t seem staged. Lastly and most importantly I kept the story simple and tried to give it heart. One of my favorite short films which I saw as a child was The Red Balloon. I think the melancholic and innocent spirit of that film inhabits One Rat Short.