"Ampersand:" an award-winning animated music video inspired by quantum physics

To earn my graduate degree at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, I was required to produce a short animated thesis film. I chose to create a visual music journey inspired by the wave-particle duality from quantum physics for my project.

I also applied for and won a Sloan Science & Film Grant to produce my film.

My film, "Ampersand," celebrates the union of science visualization, visual music, and awe for the natural world as it takes you on a playful musical journey from the subatomic to the galactic. It was inspired by the fact that all matter is made of atoms, which mysteriously behave as both particles and waves.

The title "Ampersand" connotes the idea that the way you look at a subject determines your perspective; for example, you can look at a fish as a collection of atoms, AND as an individual organism, AND as a part of an ecological system, etc. The "and"—or ampersand (&)—becomes meaningful when we realize there's always a different, yet equally valid, perspective on reality. Everything in the film is in flux to something else.

The constant flow from dots and waves, to cells and animals, to mountains and planets, and finally to the final abstract mandala is meant to show the wonder I have for the interconnected nature of life.

For visual inspiration, I produced original macro-photography to capture the way nature organizes itself at different scales.

I also created a graphical representation of the film's structure and some concept sketches, and gathered color palette inspiration:

I also used Charles and Ray Eames' 1968 films Powers of Ten as inspiration and reference:

Since "Ampersand" is a non-narrative visual music film, I used the soundtrack ("In Love with Dusk" by Keep Shelly in Athens) to structure the flow of images and scenes.

I mapped out the journey from atomic to galactic in time with the music. I wanted to design the entire film to weave between abstract and representational imagery and be one continuous dance throughout increasing scales of nature; so I knew smooth transitions from one scale/scene to the next were going to be key.

With the scenes timed to the soundtrack, Simón (the other animator) and I started animating different segments of the journey in sync with the music. We hand-drew the entire film—over 4000 frames—in Flash. (RIP, Flash. Thanks for the good times!)

We created a lot of loops since the final scene, the mandala, would require many looping elements.

I then took all 4000+ Flash frames into After Effects for coloring and compositing, and did the final export from Premiere Pro.