The four stars of Ryan Murdock’s short film are not theatre majors at Northwestern. They are not even real people.

They are clay figures.

“Power Surge,” a 13-minute short film directed by the Communication senior, is a stop-motion claymation picture produced by NU’s student-run Studio 22.

Studio 22 awards several types of grants to about 10 different student filmmakers each year, through funding provided by the School of Communication. This year’s films will be screened at an end-of-year premiere June 7 at Ryan Family Auditorium in the Technological Institute.

Lindsay Bosch, chairwoman of Studio 22, said the production company rarely receives applications for grants for claymation films like “Power Surge.”

“They take a lot of dedication and energy and a lot of skill. They’re pretty hard to make,” said Bosch, a Communication junior.

Working with clay made production time much longer than it would have been for a live-action film.

“It’s very slow-paced,” Murdock said. “Basically, you set up a shot, and then you sit there for, like, five hours.”

Murdock said he and his crew put in about an hour of work just to set up the shots for every four seconds of film. There are between 11,000 and 12,000 frames in the movie.

Murdock’s inspiration for “Power Surge” was a stop-motion film screened last year at the Block Museum of Art. He then started renting a lot more claymation and stop-motion movies from Video Adventure, 631 Chicago Ave., where he worked.

Murdock said he and his 12 crew members have probably put in thousands of hours since they started the project during Winter Quarter.

At first, Murdock said he was worried he would not be able to convince his collaborators to donate all the time required to make the film. His solution was to run his own student-organized seminar during Winter Quarter for credit.

“I think my goal from the beginning was to have people involved take this as their own thing, too,” Murdock said. Others who worked with him on the film were crucial to creating the finished product.

“A lot of people put in a lot of really great ideas about everything,” Murdock said. “Anything I work on, I want people to give input.”

Crew member Martha Jackson, a Communication sophomore, said she loved working on “Power Surge” with Murdock.

“It was really nice to have a lot of people doing the same thing,” she said. “Everyone got along really well. We all wanted it to happen.”

The film deals with the relationship between humans and technology, and features the four clay characters, all less than 10 inches tall, interacting with a computer, stereo and other technological devices.

What makes “Power Surge” unusual is its medium. Bosch said nearly all the other films that will be screened at this year’s premiere are narrative live-action movies, a much more common style.

Murdock said claymation, which has been around since at least the 1930s, has become almost a rare art form.

“A lot of people think it might be dying, but I don’t think it is,” he said.

Jackson said she is excited to be part of a project “that is so different from what everyone else is doing.”

“The final project will be worth it,” she said.

In Fall Quarter the Undergraduate Research Department awarded Murdock $1,000 to help him with the project. Studio 22 gave him a Finishing Grant for $600 at the beginning of the spring.

Now, Murdock is putting the finishing touches on his film as he looks forward to the premiere.

“Yeah, I’m nervous,” he said. “It’s my entire year on film in front of 350 people.”