“Our goal was to encourage people to dream and realize their dreams by inventing and creating more.” –Ediz Anavi

A Rube-Goldberg Machine is a very complicated chain reaction machine designed to do a very simple task. What would you design if you could make your own? What about one that makes your cocktails for you in fabulously ornate fashion? If that appeals to you, you’re in good company with talented Turkish animator, Ediz Anavi.

“We thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a machine that can make a cocktail all by itself?’ and with that thought we started our creative process,” he told us of the making of the set of three Join & Blend “Mix Lab” commercials. “We became our own inventors by producing and combining a variety of objects together to make the machine. Although our invention was brought to life with frame by frame animation, we wanted everyone to believe it was a real machine which makes cocktails in the most creative and fun way possible.”

The production of the 3 ads the team created lasted 6 days total. Since each film had a unique cocktail recipe, the machine had to also change in each film. “So, we produced interchangeable parts for our invention,” Anavi said. “Our characteristic fruits were designed by artists and produced using the silicone molding technique. In this project, we redefined how we used daily objects such as the syringe used for adding the egg white.”

The chain reaction flow of these little films is so fluid, we wondered about the usual challenges stop motion productions invariably encounter. “There was no CGI used in the films, so every movement was animated on camera. Since some of the fruits we used were real, it was quite hard to maintain their freshness throughout the shooting. As a solution to keep the fruits fresh we used freezing sprays. Another challenge was to limit the movement of the liquid in the scenes it interacted with fruits. For better control, we used dense solutions as an alternative for the liquid.”

Hopefully what Anavi and his team learned about shooting food will come in handy in future projects. Next up is a stop motion shoot for a brand that will tell a story through tea bags.
For more behind the scenes on the ads, check out this making-of video: