Moonbeams for Ellen

The inside blurb of the book this film is adapted from reads, “Moonbeams for Ellen is…a book to read…aloud to a child who can understand the sort of familial love that stretches across continents and oceans.”
This book was written by my great-grandfather, Frederick James Gillis Sr. It is a collection of letters that he wrote to his granddaughter, Ellen L Gillis, who was living in Pusan, South Korea, where her father Colonel William Duncan Gillis was stationed. She was 5 years old, in 1971, and this book was published in 1983. Frederick Gillis Sr died on Christmas Eve 1988, 2 years and a couple minutes after his wife, at the age of 95.
The environment I crafted in the film is based on the yard and hill I grew up with as a child. The house still stands, right next to the house my dad grew up in, and then had me and my siblings. We grew up with awed reverence at my family’s history in Boston, and especially on Bellevue Hill where the two houses sit. This book is a family heirloom, and has been passed on through the generations even with boxes full of originals in our basement. Ever since I realized I wanted to be an animator, it has been a dream of mine to make some version of this book into a film. I wanted to adapt these letters, and the connection they show, that stretch over continents and oceans, across generations - something my young second-cousins can watch and connect with.
But, adapting a book into a film is harder than I thought it would be, and this process has given me a much different perspective on all the ‘bad’ book-to-movie adaptations. I don’t think I actually had nailed down the story itself until around Spring Break this semester, so shoutout to everyone in the Capstone class for telling me what I needed to hear.
My goal through this whole process was to practice a healthy balance between this project and all my other commitments and relationships senior year. While there is so much more I could have done in this piece, including a lot of detail work I skimmed over, I decided against the all-nighters in favor or just enjoying my last year of college. So it’s not a perfect film, but I am very happy to say that I am content with the outcome because of all the other things I made the time to experience this year.
I kept the aesthetics tied closely to the original illustrations, which are shown in the credits. I used some code I found when researching online to modify the Arnold Toon Shader in Maya and get the crosshatch effect. With help and advice from my Capstone class and advisor, I added in a paper grain texture that I got from the physical book using a microscopic camera, and enhanced the moonbeams in After Effects using glow shaders to make them pop. The bookend stop-motion was a process, and I still haven’t figured out what to do with the fake letter props, but I felt it was important to include the daffodils that Frederick Sr planted in our backyard that still pop up every March.
The sound work was all done by my good friend, and freshman year roommate, KD Haughton. He used some combination of NASA space sounds to make the setting come to life.
This film is a love letter of nostalgia, a way to show my own appreciation and adoration of my family and the Hill that so many Gilli have lived on.