Electronic Press KitAnimated Short
I grew up watching Star Trek: The Original Series with my grandmother. What drew me in then, and still does, was how the show turned big scientific and cultural ideas into stories you could enjoy and learn from. One episode I have always remembered imagines aliens who live so fast that the crew looks frozen to them, and when the captain is sped up to their pace, we see how a person would actually experience time moving that differently ("Wink of an Eye," 1968). Another shows two aliens who are each half black and half white that hate each other because their colors fall on opposite sides of their body, and that premise showed how foolishly insane race segregation is ("Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," 1969). The show wrapped real knowledge into the experience of moving pictures and gave the audience more than a bang bang action sequence. New discoveries and understandings are made every day, and I know no better way to share them than through moving image and narrative. With that much material to draw from, action never has to be a creatives crutch. With this project I wanted to make a short comedy that carries a real idea inside it. How do you make philosophy fun and easy to digest in the era of social media shorts? Each episode of Rodger & The Chicken takes one philosophical concept and turns it into fuel for one of the oldest unsettled arguments between friends: who came first, the chicken or the egg?
The project began as a handwritten three page short story and a visit to a local chicken farm for character research. From there I built custom tools for turning story into production script, for scene blocking and camera motion, and for electronic press kit production. Flow Sessions gave me a community and a platform to bring years of live action production experience together with my own creative technology practice. Combining human and artificial processes made it possible to make something traditional sources could not or would not fund. I hope audiences laugh at two stubborn friends and leave with a small, lasting thought about how nothing stays the same.
River Davis
River Davis is a director, creative director and visual communications designer based between Los Angeles and Berlin. He works with transdisciplinary teams to develop concept-led narrative work that connects global brands with culturally relevant audiences across fashion, tech and entertainment. Rodger & The Chicken began as a series concept first pitched to a major network and was reimagined with Google and Flow Tools. His practice combines years of live action production experience with a personal creative technology practice.
In an infinite white void, a campfire flickers between Rodger the Egg and Chicken the Chicken as they meet again in the space between lives for their 423rd meeting. Rodger and Chicken declare they he have become aware of and experienced the truth that proves who came first.
Rodger takes us on a journey through the universe where he explain how he became aware of the concept of Anicca. Chicken responds with his own experience of Anicca, life, sacrifice, and death.
Back in the void, the two trade short, sharp lines about whether experience or awareness counts as knowing. And again they find themselves in a draw of wits.
Witty, philosophical, absurd, playful. Comparables: Midnight Gospel, Robot Chicken, Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Rodger & The Chicken uses a very old joke to examine different philosophical concepts. Each episode pairs one idea with a comedic cutaway adventure highlighting both the awareness and experience of it, making abstract frameworks like impermanence easy to share with a broad audience. The short also shows how an AI-native workflow, guided by a director with live action experience, can support original animated proof of concept work that conventional funding might pass over.