On Loop
Christine Hooper's five-minute film about lying awake at night, built from collaged live action and stop-motion. Shown at Greenhorn in 2014.
- Director
- Christine Hooper
- Shown at Greenhorn
- 2014
Most people know the experience at the centre of On Loop: waking in the middle of the night, and thoughts that get more irrational the longer you lie there. Christine Hooper’s film shows it from the point of view of someone in bed. The comedian Susan Calman voices the inner monologue.
Hooper made it as her graduation film at the Royal College of Art. She co-wrote it with Victoria Manifold. It mixes live action and stop-motion into a fragmented collage, inspired by David Hockney’s photomontages. To get the effect, Hooper fixed a tripod in the middle of the set and turned the camera to shoot nine separate frames, then assembled them in the edit. She said the idea started with a line she found while writing her dissertation, from the film theorist Bill Nichols: every film is a documentary.
The film runs about five minutes. It played at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2014. It was also part of the 2014 Greenhorn festival, which reviewers called a particularly strong year for animation.
For filmmakers
On Loop is a good example of a strong concept made workable on a student budget. The whole film depends on a single camera position, and the technique makes a common feeling look new. See our guide to making an animated short.
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