THE RACE – A SHORT ANIMATED FILM

A groundbreaking animated fictional documentary re-examines Aesop's classic fable, "The Hare and the Tortoise," by asking a provocative question: What if the Hare's infamous defeat was not a moral failing, but the unacknowledged struggle of undiagnosed ADHD?

"The Race" delves into the untold story of what happened after the finish line. Through compelling interviews with animal witnesses, this animated short unravels the events of the race and its devastating aftermath. We explore the profound public shaming that forced the Hare into exile, and how the "Slow and Steady wins the race" mantra became an unyielding societal dogma.

This film is a poignant exploration of judgment, neurodiversity, and the enduring power of societal narratives. It meticulously highlights the signs that, in retrospect, point to the Hare's undiagnosed ADHD – from his impulsive bragging and interruptions to his sudden distraction and infamous nap. "The Race" challenges viewers to reconsider deeply ingrained lessons, urging us to look beyond surface behaviours and understand hidden struggles.

Hi, I'm Ardi Alemi, the creator and director behind "The Race." I've been in animation for over 30 years, starting with traditional hand-drawn methods and witnessing the entire evolution of digital arts. With "The Race," I'm embracing AI to supercharge creativity and demonstrate how these new tools can help artists bring complex ideas to life more efficiently and with new levels of expression. I'm also the producer for Digital Alchemist Ltd..

We are Digital Alchemist, a production company based here in New Zealand. As a team, we are passionate about exploring the exciting intersection of art, personal experience, and new technology in storytelling. We believe in using AI-assisted filmmaking to empower creative voices. Our focus is on telling stories that have deep emotional truth and cultural relevance. We're excited to demonstrate what's possible when the right creative vision meets the right tools.

We're also thrilled to have a talented team collaborating on this project. Charlotte Wanhill from Sugarworks Post Productions will be joining us as assistant producer and main editor. Mike Bloemendal from The Pitch Media Services, pitchmediaservices.com, will be creating the original music and sound design. And Marshall Smith from The Soundroom will be leading the voice acting creations.

Here's what your generous contributions will help fund:

• AI Tool Subscriptions: All the applications and websites we'll be using professionally, including Chat GPT Plus, Midjourney, Kling AI , Hedra.com, Topaz Upscaler, Elevenlabs, and Suno, cost money to use.
• Production Costs: This includes crucial elements like refining our AI-generated environments and digital puppet rigs , ensuring the final assets are refined and upscaled to 2K cinema resolution using AI-enhancement tools. It also covers the iterative experimentation, prompt engineering, rendering time, and visual consistency management that AI-assisted filmmaking demands. As much as AI makes it easier, it also takes a lot of iterations and outtakes to achieve what we need.
• Voice Acting: While we're pioneering AI for some dialogue, we're also collaborating with voice talent to embody complex and nuanced personalities, with each voice selected for contrast and tone. Marshall Smith from The Soundroom will be doing the voice acting creations.
• Music and Sound Design: Your support will enable us to create an original score blending documentary piano motifs and organic textures with glitchy digital layers. It will also fund detailed sound design, giving each character's environment its own audio motif and adding subtle hums, chair creaks, and off-camera animal noises for realism in interviews. Mike Bloemendal from The Pitch Media Services, pitchmediaservices.com, will do the music and sound design.
• Post-Production: This covers essential aspects like editing, which will be a mixture of back-and-forth between characters, their memories, and jump cuts with archival overlays. It also includes colour grading to give the digital assets a tactile, lived-in feel. Charlotte Wanhill from Sugarworks Post Productions is joining us as the assistant producer and main editor.
• Team Support: This budget also supports our dedicated team, allowing for disciplined scheduling and close monitoring of delivery milestones to ensure timely completion. Producing an animated film of this scope is ambitious, and maintaining visual and narrative excellence while navigating limited time and resources is a primary challenge. The initial NZD 15,000 will get this project rolling before we can secure more funding to finish the film.
• Festival Submissions and Marketing: A significant portion of the funds will go towards submitting "The Race" to major international film and animation festivals around the world, as many as we can. This is crucial for showcasing the film and demonstrating New Zealand's leadership in using the latest technology.

"The Race" is an animated documentary that revisits the legendary race between the Tortoise and the Hare. It's a deeply personal project for me, as I was diagnosed with ADHD at 47, and the Hare's story suddenly became my story. I've experienced the pain of boredom, the frustration of waiting for others, and the heartbreak of failing after losing focus, feeling that society's pace was just different from mine. This film is my way of expressing that experience and giving it a voice that others might recognise in themselves.

We are reimagining one of the world's most recognised fables with urgency and insight, transforming it into a cinematic exposé. We aim to engage audiences on an emotional, intellectual, and social level by aligning the Hare's journey with the lived reality of neurodivergent individuals. This challenges conventional narratives about success, failure, and ability. We also want to bring the suffering of neurodivergent people into the light.

As an artist who learned animation by drawing every frame and inking cells, I've witnessed the entire evolution of digital arts. Thirty years after my first animation, I'm embracing AI not to replace creativity, but to supercharge it. My goal is to demonstrate how new AI tools can enable artists to tackle more complex ideas more efficiently and with new levels of expression. In this film, we plan to utilise Artificial Intelligence not only for animation and visual generation, but also for script development in a completely new way. By designing detailed personas for each animal and feeding those into AI, we can generate improvised character interviews, like calling ghosts of the past to speak for themselves. This is a revolutionary approach to performance and dialogue creation.

The film's visual style will be a tactile stop-motion look achieved through AI-rendered assets and frame-by-frame motion design. Each character is modelled on New Zealand's native and introduced species, rendered with handcrafted textures. We'll use narrative devices like interview segments, archival footage, and flashback recreations to make "The Race" feel like an intimate exposé of a society shaped by a single event. It blends the charm of fables with the critical lens of modern documentary, pushing the medium visually and narratively. Through layered world-building, emotional nuance, and satirical sharpness, it aims to provoke thought and resonate with festival audiences worldwide.

"The Race" needs to be seen and heard because it presents a unique opportunity to blend art, personal feelings, and new technology in a fresh and innovative way of telling stories. It's about a story that feels very real and important to our culture. We're retelling a classic tale and giving it new meaning and urgency. It's more than just a smart new version; it's like a documentary that shows what's really going on.

This short film aims to connect with people's emotions, minds, and social views. By connecting the Hare's journey to what neurodivergent people actually experience, we aim to foster understanding and challenge outdated notions about what success, failure, and ability mean. We also want to shed light on the struggles of neurodivergent individuals.

Our community should support us because this animation and its technology are very current and popular right now. We want to show the world that New Zealand is a leader in using the newest technology. We also want to set a good example for using AI in art in New Zealand, and create a case study for artists everywhere. This project supports the director's very personal story, which speaks for many people who aren't often heard. We are sure we can finish this film within our budget because we planned it around what our team, tools, and story do best. "The Race" has a good chance at film festivals and tells an important story, so it's a risk worth taking.