The Elephant’s Song
By Lynn Tomlinson (U.S.)
When animator Lynn Tomlinson (The Ballad of Holland Island House) heard the story of Old Bet, the first circus elephant in America, on a podcast, she was so moved by the tragic tale that she decided to work on an animated project based on the story.“Here was a social animal and the only one of her species on the continent, all alone and unable to communicate with others of her kind,” she notes. “With Ringling Bros. retiring their elephants and subsequently closing down, it felt like a timely subject to take on.”
Tomlinson decided to tell the story from the P.O.V. of a dog in Old Bet’s menagerie and collaborated with her son Sam Saper, who wrote the lyrics of the song that makes up the soundtrack of the film. The project took about two years to complete, but the big challenge was boiling down all the information that she had collected into one cohesive song.
The hand-crafted animation was created with clay-on-glass animation, where oilbased modeling clay is spread thinly on a glass sheet and moved frame by frame. “My animation is a truly independent process,” explains Tomlinson. “I animate the film alone in a home office. My only direct assistance with the animation came from my mom and my daughter. This film was a true family project.
This means that the only cost is that of materials, which is almost negligible. For inspiration, I used everything from YouTube videos of elephants swimming to famous Hudson River School paintings, like The Oxbow by Thomas Cole. I also listened to 1,200 hours of books on tape as I worked on this project!”
Tomlinson counts Sesame Street and The Electric Company as some of her earliest influences. “I remember seeing Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis’s When the Day Breaks when it first came out,” she adds. “I have watched that film dozens of times since then, and it grows more resonant with every viewing, like a good short story.”
Looking back at the experience, Tomlinson says the project works as a great exercise in building empathy. “Old Bet’s story was a way into thinking about a complicated web of ideas, it’s not just about one historical elephant. I like telling stories from perspectives that make you walk in others’ shoes.” And why animation? “I love movement. I like thinking in three and four dimensions — painting feels too limited. I want to move around and through space. I love animating these shifts and transformations of space through the fluidity of the clay-on-glass medium.”