Watch the trailer above. The full film is available on Vimeo Staff Pick Premieres.
A robot vacuum hardly seems an obvious hero for a story about finding purpose. That is precisely the appeal of Tennis, Oranges, Sean Pecknold’s stop-motion short about a hospital-cleaning machine that leaves its routine behind and encounters two rabbits living repetitive, isolated lives. Its unlikely trio gives a familiar feeling—being stuck—a wonderfully unfamiliar shape. [1]
Pecknold traced the setting’s origins to Chung King Road in Los Angeles’s Chinatown. He and production designer Adi Goodrich once ran their studio there, and the neighborhood’s people and colors informed the film. Written in 2019 and completed in 2023, the project took shape around other commissions. A single stage and one set of puppets kept the production working sequentially. [2]
A world built through details
The production photographs reveal how much care went into the places these characters inhabit. A hospital corridor combines pale pink walls with teal doors and geometric flooring. Tiny printed books and packages bring ordinary daily life down to miniature scale. These details matter because the film’s emotional premise depends on believing that its inhabitants have routines, possessions, and histories beyond a single shot.
Emily Franz created the puppets and served as art director, while Goodrich led the production design. The contrast between the rabbits’ textured fur and the vacuum’s smooth, round shell gives the characters immediate visual identities. Even before movement enters the equation, their materials suggest different relationships to the world around them. [1]
The film credits also list Pecknold as cinematographer and lighting artist, with editing by Aaron Beckum and Pecknold, sound design and mix by Studio Kamp, and music by Claude Debussy. The animation team includes Alfonso Estrada, Akash Jones, Daniel Olivas, Sarah De Gaudemar, Evelyn J. Ross, Eileen Kohlhepp, Shea Ramsey, Charles D’Avignon, and Pecknold. The film was produced at Sing-Sing in Los Angeles and is distributed by Autour de Minuit. [1]
What makes this combination inviting is the way a modest cast opens onto a larger emotional landscape. A machine built to repeat a task becomes the point of entry into a story about breaking repetition. The miniature world gives that idea weight, texture, and a place to live.
Images from the production
Tennis, Oranges: trailer frame and production photographs by Sean Pecknold / Sing-Sing. [2]
References
- Sean Pecknold — Pecknold’s official credits.
- Dragonframe — Filmmaker interview and production details.
