Highly detailed destruction in this fun post apocalyptic student short from Anthony Straus. It boasts some excellent animation and a charming 50’s sci-fi feel. Read on to hear from the monster maker himself.

Anthony Straus-

I created Scrap Metal at Sheridan College for my thesis film. It took about eight months to complete and was filmed entirely on a base about the size of your average kitchen table. Before I got the idea for the film, I kind of knew I wanted to do some sort of post-apocalyptic film in stop-motion. Other dystopic films were around at that time, but they were all CG and I was really inspired by the work Ray Harryhausen and Phil Tippett had done way beforehand without computers generated effects; so I thought, “I am going to be the guy that brings stop-motion back to sci-fi genre”. Looking back, it was an unrealistic endeavor for a student to go after, but it definitely made me push myself harder.

The soundrack is an original score by composer Paul Levasseur, whom I pushed to invoke the monster-flick sound I wanted, which I think he achieved. The story did not set out to be a monster-flick from the beginning, but as I refined the story more, I had to stop and step back before I realised that, well, its an old-school monster-flick. After that I fully embraced the spirit of 50’s monster movies and fell in love with it.

-Thanks, Anthony. We look forward to some post-post-apocalypse work, once it clears post production, of course. -Dragonframe