Eternal Return is an adventure/romance homage to the bittersweet shift we are currently experiencing in cinema as digital technology edges out film. Based on the idea that time and space always repeat itself in a kind of infinite loop, it’s a story about two lovers suspended in time. We tell the story from her perspective, as if it’s her imagination. Two heroic characters, thrown into an endlessly repeatable action based on simple but dramatic choices. We might not know why she's falling or why he's running, but it's a classic tension with an impossible resolution.

When Adobe challenged us to envision the cinematic experience using our design process and technology, we were initially drawn to the mechanical origins of cinema, and especially the zoetrope. It's such a beautiful and profound mechanism at once, both limited and infinite. This play on time worked well for the simple story we wanted to tell of two people trying to connect to each other, but perpetually suspended in time.

Creating a Human Zoetrope was technically challenging as we needed every angle from the same person all at once. By building a 26 camera array and capturing every angle in a single frame, we were able to pull every angle needed in animation. Once we built the rig in Adobe After Effects using simple scripts, we were able to control rotation, speed, scale, camera angle and axis rotation of each position.

The light trails were shot by using the camera rig with long shutter. Each shot was tripped by laser for absolute precision. By having the runner and the falling woman repeat the same action over and over but start in a new place each time, we were able to capture the whole range of movement each with a 360 degree light trail. Once synced, the motion created a slipped time, zoetrope stop-motion effect that supported the idea of two lovers lost in a disruptive time warp.

Shooting the woman as live action for some of the shots was critical to conveying the idea that this was her story, her imagination. We loved the idea that she was somehow controlling everything by light from a hybrid of a zoetrope mechanism and traditional film projection.