INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR SANTIAGO CARRASQUILLA

Santiago Carrasquilla is a director and founder of Art Camp, a multidisciplinary studio launched in 2016 in New York, now working globally. His work blends craft and technology across live action, animation, and design.

We spoke with Santiago Carrasquilla about Ode to Circles, the film he created thanks to Flim. For years, he has been drawn to the quiet, recurring presence of circular forms. Flim finally gave him a way to bring them all together, crafting a mesmerizing film made from every circle ever captured on camera. From suns and moons to eyes, wheels, clocks, and more._

What first sparked the idea for the film?

In some sense, this is a film I've always wanted to make. I've always been really obsessed with circles and the circular shape. I've always collected libraries of circular things and taken pictures of different circular things. Three years ago, I started using Flim to research for my own directing projects. The fact that Flim is able to use AI to tag this enormous archive with words made me realize that wow, it would be so cool to just come up with lists of all the circular things that exist and search that list in Flim. We started with a circle, but then expanded to shots of the sun, irises, plates, wheels, etc. In some sense, the idea for this film is the result of a longstanding obsession, but with an understanding of the power of the database that really created it.


Looking at the film now, what emotion or underlying message resonates the most?

My goal with the film was always to create a hypnotic experience and to spark that same obsession I have in whoever watches it. Hopefully people that watch it look at the world differently, and most importantly, look at circles differently, and can tap into this great joy. The joy I have whenever I find circles out in the world: there's another circle, there's another circle… It checks off a little pleasing experience in my day. A sense of wonder - wow, it really does seem like this is so elemental. Why is that so?

Flim played a key role in shaping this piece. Could you walk us through how you used the platform and how your keyword searches guided your exploration?

Flim is just a truly incredible archive. Not only because of the sheer volume and the capability of downloading GIFs or stills or MOVs or MP4s, but mostly because of its incredible research capabilities. If you type "sun," how interesting is it that you can see all the suns in all the films and commercials from history? Flim doesn't have every single thing that's ever been made, but it really is quite extensive and therefore very powerful. We moved on to research more specific words, using ChatGPT to come up with what are all the other circular things - wheels, moon, sun, eye, flour, fruits, plates, clocks. You type "clock" into Flim and you see all the clocks that have appeared in all these films and commercials. It's just astounding and incredible.

An excerpt from Santiago Carrasquilla's board on Flim:

How does navigating a visual archive like Flim influence the way you think and work creatively?

It's capable of sparking so many possible new creative connections. On one hand, it's very useful for references for future work you're trying to create. On the other hand, it's just very useful for allowing your brain to just imagine new possibilities. The interface is very much set up for that. You're looking for the sun and it appears in all these other ways that you didn't necessarily intend. It's very rabbit hole-like, capable of leading you into unexpected places. And it's very easy to use and very fast.

As a director, how do visual references feed your imagination and help you refine your vision?

Being able to visualize something before you make it, not just in your mind, but in an actual physical form that you can even communicate with clients and collaborators. The goal is never to replicate. It's to build a visual language. That's why we always love to have multiple references, so you're ultimately not really just copying anything.

Looking ahead, what is shifting in your practice right now? Any new obsessions, emerging forms, or upcoming projects you're excited to share?

I'm really excited about this piece because it's something I've been wanting to make for a long time. I feel it's really personal to me and therefore extra special. The way we're working with emerging technology and AI is really changing everything. It's allowing us to previsualize everything much more specifically before we even shoot anything. It's allowing us to be really playful before we even shoot anything. It's allowing us to communicate visions with clients. That's really exciting to me. And I'm simultaneously more and more interested in traditional forms - transferring things onto film, physical processes far away from the computer. The combination of those two things is something that's always fascinated me and continues to fascinate me.

👉 View the full board of the film.

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Visual references from the project