"The inspiration for "Eternal Gaze" came
to me when I was taking a life-drawing night class at Stanford
University after our instructor assigned us to read a book
called "A Giacometti Portrait." It was an 18-day
diary written by American James Lord about what it was like
for him to pose for Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). That
turned out to be an intense, exhausting and exhilirating
experience that led to both individuals becoming each other's
respective subject matters. What hit me like a ton of bricks
was that for the first time in my life, I came across someone
that saw the world in the same way that I did -- the way
a fellow kindred spirit would. Also what struck me was just
how pure and singularly driven Giacometti was in the pursuit
of his art. His words lept out of the page at me whenever
he lamented about how much of a failure he was and yet,
he saw the hope in the tiny steps of progress to continue
on each day. One of my favorite quotes by him is:
"The more you fail, the more you succeed. It is
only when everything is lost and - instead of giving up
- you go on, that you experience the momentary prospect
of some slight progress. Suddenly you have the feeling -
be it an illusion or not - that something new has opened
up.”
Giacometti
uttered these words shortly before his death and as I read
them now, they seem as universal and timeless as ever. What's
interesting is that Giacometti stands beside Picasso and
Matisse as an artist who has defined the way art is perceived
and alongside them as one of the few modern artists who
have created sculpture, paintings and drawings with equal
mastery. Yet, Giacometti remains as the least recognized
of the great artists of the twentieth-century. Giacometti
isn't a household name, nor does he even have his own museum
or gallery solely dedicated to him to this day. Giacometti
to the commoner is pretty much an unknown, but for this
filmmaker, he is the perfect subject matter.
So
once I became intoxicated by the mystique and the intrigue
of this man, I started to investigate what his art was like.
Lo and behold, the elongated and emaciated nature of his
art immediately appealed to me. I had been interested in
the abstraction of the human form in African Art for quite
awhile and coincidentally, Giacometti was also heavily influenced
by this illusory concept as well. But the real "eureka"
moment of epiphany for me was when I read an essay that
imagined Giacometti sculptures running amok through the
streets of Paris, either trying to find their way home or
fleeing their captor. This led to a series of sketches and
storyboards that eventually became "Eternal Gaze."
Besides
my affinity towards Giacometti, what prompted me to quit
my day job and devote all my resources into telling this
story was a simple curiosity: What would it be like if your
art could come alive and love you back when you least expect
it? Driven by these questions, I sketched and storyboarded
intensely for a frustrating 6 months until I hit a fork
in the road, or perhaps more accurately, a deadend. Sensing
that the story wasn't going anywhere, I abandoned it all
one morning and decided to start the laborious process again
from scratch. To my surprise, after changing the main focus
of the story from the Art to the Artist, the story came
pouring out of me and was completed in a mere 2 hours.
To
make a long story short, the whole production wound up taking
about 3 years with only 2 artists involved. My collaborator
Jamey Scott did all the sound design and composed the score
while I did all the visuals and animation by myself. The
total running time is 15:50 with about 220 shots total.
My decision to solo all the visual aspects of this film
was initially not my intent. I had asked a couple of friends
to be my TD's and effects animators so I could focus on
the story and the main animation. But without compensation
or enough self-motivation, my potential assistants quickly
fell by the wayside. So out of necessity, I threw caution
into the wind and just muscled my way through the whole
production pipeline by myself for 3 years working almost
continuously without weekends and breaks. During the most
grueling phases of the journey, I would often think about
Reinhold Messner, the first man to ascend Mt.Everest solo.
That gave me encouragement to trudge onwward.
By
the end of the production, my friends noticed I was channeling
Giacometti. I was becoming my subject matter - the tormented
and battered artist that was barely held together by a thread
of hope. A hope that art would somehow redeem us ultimately
if we gave it our all. In hindsight, there were many parallels
between what I was experiencing personally and what was
happening to the character in my film. It was the old adage
of life imitating art.
Looking
back, "Eternal Gaze" was the hardest thing I had
ever attempted and the most pain I'd ever gone through.
And yet, somehow I don't remember any of it. All I feel
now is a deep sense of peace."
--Sam
Chen , September 2004
