A seaside bathed by the sun, a young woman moves into the light, time is accelerating in front of the lens of the camera, unrolling the film of a life.

This short film shows us a young woman coming to an island to film an eclipse. When the camera starts to roll, time accelerates all around her faster and faster. So she walks in this magic universe.

This student film was made at the SUPINFOCOM CGI school in 1998. The idea came to me while going through the pages of a fashion magazine. The flaring style and the “burnt“ look of these photographs attracted me so much that I wanted to reproduce this kind of image with CG tools. I then made a scenario around those strong images that I had in my mind.

The subtle variations of the of lighting create a tropical and paradisiac climate. I wanted the audience to feel the heat as if standing in the sun.

In my opinion, this short film is more finalized in terms of lighting. I like to use light to erase, colour, heat or freeze an object. I think the quest for realism in CG should be achieved by a very deep and thorough work on lighting rather than work on the complexity of the objects.

Because of the character animation, which is really not my specialty, I preferred to focus all my efforts on the atmospheres of the shots to fine tune the picture. The whole film was made with 3DSmax2. I then knew that I could not obtain ultra-realistic pictures, so I tested a graphic line halfway between photography and classical CG pictures. Since I had to work on a small hardware configuration, I had to experiment, find technical tricks, turn arounds, and eventually develop a new approach. This is something that people working on higher-end hardware would not venture into.