How to Build a Time Machine follows two men as they set out on a journey to build their own time machines. Rob Niosi is a stop-motion animator who has spent the last 13 years obsessively constructing a full-scale replica of the time machine prop from the 1960 adaptation of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. It's his attempt to recapture the memory of seeing the film in theaters with his father. Dr. Ron Mallett is a theoretical physicist whose story begins with a tragedy. He was only 10 years old when his father died suddenly of a heart attack. Distraught, he sought solace in science-fiction. After reading The Time Machine, Ron dedicated his life to studying physics. He has since become a professor at the University of Connecticut and is now working on building a real time machine in the hopes that he might go back in time to save his father's life.