Automated Assets is a workplace comedy featuring two robots chatting it up at their workstations. Robot #1 (Matt London) tells Robot #2 (Robert Dastoli) a story about something that happened to him the other day while simultaneously fielding a phone call from a customer. The story he tells was plucked from the fabric of James and Robert's real life. I recall them many a time marveling at Boston Market's decision to remove ham from the dinner menu, even contemplating a short based on what they imagined that board meeting at the restaurant's corporate offices must have been like. However, when searching for CGI robot-based ideas, they opted to simply adapt the story into this short commentary on the hypocrisy of companies.

James and Robert's robot work here is beautiful, and if the quality leap from Respectable Employ's M3NO to Automated Assets' Robot #1 is any indication, their next robot is going to be mind blowing. My favorite part, aside from Robot #2's sly nod to my own The Last Man, is Matt London telling James and Robert how they should animate the robot in the Behind the Scenes.

Here is what the Dastolis have to say about Automated Assets:

ROBERT:

"The whole point of doing Automated Assets was to do something with robots, because I think that if you just throw robots into any random human situation it's just funny. We had to wait until we had all the narative down for the ham conversation to finally getting around to doing a robot story, but I remember about a year previous thinking about a silent montage short with two robots falling in love."

JAMES:

"Had Diego Kontarovsky performed the voice of Robot #1 like we had originally thought he would, I think you would have had a much different film. I still think that for the tone we wanted, Matt "Scotty" London was the right choice."

Ah yes. The story behind this is that I pretty much had the role, but when they brought the screenplay into their Short Script class and their classmate Matt London read the role of Robot #1 aloud, they enjoyed his performance so much that they recast the role without bothering to hear me read for it. Needless to say, this was potentially the worst decision in Dastoli Digital history since Paola Aleman in The Up and Up. I really love Matt London's reading; it's perfect for the character, but as James says, it could have been a much different film. I once asked James and Robert what exactly the differences would have been had I played the role, and the only thing they said was that the character design of Robot #1 would have more closely resembled a toaster.