The Birth of the Robot

This experiment was a prestige advertisement for Shell Motor Oil As conventional animation became dominated by Walt Disney many European filmmakers turned to puppets as an alternative and Lye enlisted the help of avantgarde friends such as Humphrey Jennings and John Banting to make the amusing puppets Exploring the stillcomplex color process which involved the combination of three separate images Lye creates such a vivid storm scene that reviewers hailed it as proof that the color film has entered a new stage The music is Holsts The Planets Harvard Film Archive