Kate Renshaw-Lewis was on a 30-minute lunch break from her job at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles when she bought a tuna wrap from a grocery store. Plastered on the wrap was a sticker advertising that the meal had been made by hand.
“Whose hand made this? How did it get here?” Renshaw-Lewis remembered thinking. “It felt very ominous and bizarre and absurd, just those separations that have become so normalized.”
The image of that sad tuna wrap, described by Renshaw-Lewis as “sweaty and slanted to the side under a sheet of plastic,” was the impetus for hundreds of hours animating her latest short film, “Busy Bodies,” which is premiering at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
The six-minute film explores the secret world of how mass-produced products are made. Whimsical, long-nosed creatures wearing wizard hats endlessly paint rubber gloves red, birth lemons from organic tubes and slice up green fish, all while being monitored by stretching, disembodied arms.
The tiny factory workers are the latest in a long line of silly little creatures Renshaw-Lewis has designed. She said she likes to design short and squat creatures because she’s “a pretty short and squat person, too.”
“Wallace and Gromit,” “Gremlins” and “E.T.” — which terrified her as a child — have served as the greatest inspirations in character design.
Unlike “E.T.,” “Busy Bodies” is far from a horror film, but the never-ending act of manufacturing creates an intentionally ominous feel. Renshaw-Lewis was inspired by a video about a newspaper factory shutting down. The transformation of a bustling maternity ward of presses into a silent, barren graveyard sat with Renshaw-Lewis for a long time.
Complementing the unsettling vibe is the score, which was recorded by Renshaw-Lewis, colorist Arius Ziaee and musician Alex Edgeworth at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum.
“(We) all went for two hours and just played synths non-stop. We didn’t take any breaks. We came out, and we were all delirious from the different sounds,” Renshaw-Lewis recalled.
The score was inspired by the work of pioneers of electronic music: Ursula Bogner, Joe Meek, Raymond Scott and Delia Derbyshire.
The remainder of the music and sound design, consisting of clarinet, harmonium and a variety of Foley sounds, was recorded by Renshaw-Lewis in her bedroom.
That bedroom is also where Renshaw-Lewis drew the film digitally by hand. Then, she printed each of the hundreds of 2-inch-wide frames on sheets using a combination of screen and inkjet printing techniques.
The film’s simple aesthetic of reds, greens and yellows was a result of the limitations of screen printing, which requires separate screens for each color used.
Although “Busy Bodies” is not Renshaw-Lewis’ first short film, it is the first she’s created since college. She graduated with her bachelor’s of fine arts in experimental animation from California Institute of the Arts in 2021.
Renshaw-Lewis squeezed in the animating between other jobs. She picked factory production as a focus because it reflected, and in some ways justified, the medium of hand-drawn animation.
“I really wanted to make a film that was deeply connected to that method because it felt like it would make the film stronger, and also, it would make me feel less crazy for picking such a meticulous method,” Renshaw-Lewis said.
The film’s biggest inspiration was Rube Goldberg machines — overcomplicated devices running on a series of chain reactions, made to accomplish simple tasks, often in perpetuity. Through “Busy Bodies,” Renshaw-Lewis posits that the never-ending production and consumption of late-stage capitalism is a Rube Goldberg machine, too.
“Capitalism is made with a goal in mind, which is profit. But that profit does not reach most people who are part of the machine. There’s a very few at the top who make a lot of the profit,” she said. “Below that, it feels like a Rube Goldberg machine, this constant cycle that, in this film and in a lot of what we’re seeing now, self-deteriorates.”
“Busy Bodies” will premiere as part of the Animated Short Film Program at 9 p.m. on Jan. 23 at The Yarrow Theatre.
Learn more and reserve tickets at tinyurl.com/29auyxsj.
‘Busy Bodies’ in-person screenings
- 9 p.m., Jan. 23, The Yarrow Theatre
- 9:40 p.m., Jan. 24, Megaplex Redstone 2
- 11:30 a.m., Jan. 25, Broadway Centre Cinemas 3
- 4 p.m., Jan. 31, Holiday Village Cinemas 2
- 4:40 p.m., Feb. 1, Megaplex Redstone 2
Online
- 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1