How To Capture Light
June 2015
How To Capture Light is a short one minute animation about the experience of light. The whole movie is inspired by the work of James Turrell.
This project was the final assignment of my first year at St.Joost acadamy. We were asked to make a one minute animation inspired by one the main exhibits in "de Pont Museum" in Tilburg, Netherlands. The title had te be in the form of an "How To..." question.
I decided to pick "Wedgeworks III" by James Turrell. I was intrigued by its simplicity of colour and shape. The most important aspect of the work of James Turrell is that he always finds a new way to exhibit light. He thinks that
light can be the sole component of art. We are constantly surrounded by light and yet we never take time to experience the beauty of it.
I wanted to share his philosophy in the form of a narrative animation. I wanted to create a short which would show the beauty and intimidating power of light. That's why i decided to design a character made of mirror shards. This way i could share my experience without giving the character any real importance. It was important that the character would be inferior to the experience of light. With the help of the mirrors, the only thing the audience would see when they would look at the character, would be the reflection of what he sees.
I tried several ways to bring this concept to the screen. I tried to project animated patterns on a real sculpture made of mirrorshards. The problem was that the projector was still visible in the mirrors and the reflections in the room were too fragmented.
This is why i decided to create a man made out of mirrors with 2D animation. The reflection in the mirrors would be filmed with life-action shots of light. I placed those clips in the character in a fragmented way with the help of green screen techniques to get that broken mirror feeling.
Put all of this together and my first movie was madet official animation was made!
this movie was temporarily exhibited in the library of De Pont Museum in Tilburg, Netherlands.
It is also shown on Arttube.nl