Robot & Scarecrow Come to Life in Amazing New Film

Award winning Nexus director Kibwe Tavares has just released a new short film called Robot & Scarecrow. The beautiful, bittersweet tale follows a romantic encounter between, well, a robot and a scarecrow. 

Starring Jack O'Connell as the come-to-life scarecrow and Holliday Grainger as a celebrated robotic music artist, the pair are unrecognisable in their respective roles. The film is set at an unspecified UK music festival and follows O'Connell's scarecrow as he comes to life and is transfixed by Grainger's robot who, following a malfunction, makes a bid for freedom from a life on stage.

Below, Tavares explains the inspiration for the film, how he got the actors involved and why he finds short films so compelling.

Where did the idea for Robot and Scarecrow come from?

It wasn’t one thing. All of my ideas are a combination of things that come together strangely. Ruth McKenzie at The Space, who commissioned the film, was interested in films about British festivals and culture.

It was also part Katy Perry; we had this crazy music video and we were about to shoot it but it all fell through. During the research for that I watched a lot of films which featured her. I watched a scene (in the documentary Part of Me) where she had to go on stage after being really upset and she has to transform and smile. That idea that whatever is going on, you’re going on. 

So, there was something interesting in that for me. The scarecrow was meant to be the opposite, he hasn’t got lots of people around him, he’s a Pinocchio-type character. I wanted to tell a love story and I also wanted to do these technical/emotional tests; how do I do a digital character that uses an actor to drive the performance?  All of those things came together.  


What was the process of getting Jack O’Connell and Holliday Grainger to play the two main roles?

One of my best friends, Aisha Walters, is a casting director at McAuley Walters, who cast Jonah [another short film by Tavares] for me, and the UEFA spot I’m working on now. She’d worked with Jack before and there was also a link with the actor Daniel Kaluuya, the lead in Jonah, as both he and Jack had worked together on Skins. 

I asked Daniel to make sure Jack read the script, which he did; he liked it and he said yes. Holliday we approached through Troika (sister company and talent agency of DMC Film who co-produced Robot and Scarecrow with Nexus). She’d worked with Jack before and was up for it. It’s thanks to Daniel and Aisha.

You shot much of the film at a real music festival; why did you want to do that and how difficult did that make the shoot?

There was the fact that The Space were interested in films about British festivals/culture and I thought it was going to be cool. Freeform, handheld, loose with a really high-end level of effects. I thought that would be a cool thing to see. Shooting that way, sometimes means I can focus more on the story, the idea. There are less constraints for me sometimes when the budget isn’t there.  

By shooting with these constraints at the music festival, we couldn’t have had a bigger crew, it wasn’t allowed. Those constraints were helpful. For example, if we wanted to control everything, for the budget we had, we’d have got 40 extras; how would we have got the scale of a music festival? Say you wanted to have a chase scene down Oxford Street, there’s one way of doing it which is shutting Oxford Street, paying all the shops, stopping the traffic, £2m. Or you get extras and work around it, you do it for less, with the same feeling.    

The VFX in the film are amazing.  Who undertook those?

The majority of the VFX were by Chocolate Tribe, and Factory Fifteen did the rest. Nexus Studios designed the Robot and Factory Fifteen designed the Scarecrow. It was amazing working with Chocolate Tribe; that process, once we got to post, was very fluid. I liked the way they worked.

The robot’s music in the film is hauntingly good; is that original music? 

That’s original music by my brother, GAIKA, and his producer. It was a good fit for him, we’ve been working a lot together recently. There are two tracks from GAIKA, the original music for robot and one from the album.

You’ve shot award-winning shorts in the past; what is it about the medium of short films that you love?

The financial constraints aren’t always good but they allow a certain kind of freedom. You’re trying to tell a story but you’re not constrained by traditional models. It would cost £20m for Robot and Scarecrow as a feature film. A short allows us to experiment and test the waters.  

How long did the project take from start to finish?

Three years, with an 18 month hiatus in the middle to secure funding.

What was the most difficult part of the process?

The 18-month hiatus. It was so frustrating and emotionally draining. You wake up and it’s weighing over you. You’re thinking, ‘have I bitten off more than I can chew?’  I always knew it was quite a big thing to get made. I sometimes got a crazy sinking feeling at the storyboard stage; fuck I can’t do it! And then you just think, ‘fuck it, let’s go for it’. 

Even if you’re lucky there are few opportunities to make things you really want to make. For someone to give you an open commission and for us to find funding from [social media platform] Vero, I had to go for it.

And the most rewarding?

When we started to see some of the shots really working, when we knew we were going to finish it. Not when we were about to finish, as that always gets antsy and annoying, but before that, when you have a shot and then you see the actor in it and it works and that’s a great feeling.  

What are you working on next?

I’m working on UEFA, which is a spot about encouraging girls to play football, and my film called The Kitchen, starring Daniel Kaluuya and the same producer as Robot and Scarecrow, and a project with DNA Films.