Coin Operated is an award-winning 5 minute science fiction short film about a young boy with dreams about exploring the galaxy. Via Short of the Week:
A young boy, like many others, dreams of going out to space and explore the galaxy. A simple coin operated space ship at a corner of a street will have a decisive impact on his life. A bright and family-friendly 3D animation, writer/director Nicholas Ariol nevertheless embeds mature themes into this simple work, and subverts expectations along the way—making this 5 minute animated short film into a beautiful allegory of life that is surprisingly emotional.
First-time filmmaker Arioli approached the film’s premise from a personal angle—driven by the challenge of telling a complete story in a short time with no dialogue, he drew his inspiration from the concept of “life savings”. The paradoxical mix of feelings that tag along those two words was something Arioli wanted to capture in a film, relating to us that the idea “seemed to me both a melancholy and a hopeful concept at the same time. We can accumulate one life savings, and spend it on one grand thing. Our dreams and our mortality collide in this common phrase.“