whisper (by Jim Ellis music by Aksak Maboul) 1997

search
bright
blinding
try to speak
apologies
thanks
ashamed
proud
can't speak of it
one word
of many
to loved ones
to strangers
this whisper

This is a short film that I created out of a series of loops (made in Softimage) for a one night art installation that originally took place at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions back in 1997. The loops lend themselves to lengthy repetition. This was the best manner to perceive the seemingly impossible geometry shifts that took place. I decided to make a short film from the loops, even though by do so, I felt I compromised the trance element a bit for the sake of brevity. When it came time for me to compose an original soundtrack, I was inspired by the song "Scratch Holiday" by the band "Aksak Maboul". Rather than try to compose an original song, I decided to go with the main source of musical inspiration. So "Scratch Holiday" was used. Check out and go buy their music, it's well well worth it. crammed.be/crammed/101/index.htm

The basic animation for this was made in about 2-3 days of me being awake the entire time. I was working on about 15 SGI computers at once. I was frantically dashing between the computers in the CalArts lab, jiggling the mouse, and previewing the animation. The other students thought I was bonkers. It was really about trying to capture a moment of inspiration in the traditionally very slow and tedious creative realm of computer animation. Rather than hit on an idea, and then spend months/years trying to hold onto that initial spark to make a film, I made the work when I was still directly influenced by that moment of inspiration. This was really the start of me realizing that I had to go real-time with CGI. In fact, I did make a real-time version of this (in about 2001) in the real-time software "Touch".

I wanted "life", "mood", and "inspiration" in the piece. In the end, I think I got "ghost in the machine". It became a very personal piece to me, as it was the first time I felt that I had really created a film that accurately reflected aspects of my inner head space. It also became a bit of "see this what I've been trying to say, but was unable to put into words". Guess I had to make a film to say it.

enjoy

Jim Ellis