Wishful thinking

Jill Scott bypasses this whole sad sorry pileup of video art and cinema; she shoots straight fop broadcast TV in her delightful Wishful Thinking. In doing so she finds, effortlessly and unpretentiously, an actual, working video narrative language - one which really moves, breathes, and has the capacity to keep reinventing itself. For once, someone has found a few good reasons to pull out all those spinning-transforming-blinking video effects - a triumph facilitated by the spirited and deeply knowledgeable adoption of a fantasy sci fi framework. On another plane, by linking trick video with an energetic modern acting tradition (play on stereotype, gesture, physique), Scott and her collaborators come up trumps with a showbiz sense of fast humour that puts into relief even the corniest utopian visions of the tape. Through the sheer force of her inventiveness, Jill Scott has crashed out of the gloomy graveyard of video art.

Adrian Martin
Film News. 1988.

Sci-fi Mythologies
"Wishful thinking" is a five part mini series for television, full of surreal and amusing adventures. It is a stereotypical look at ourselves through the digital eyes of two female replicants from planet X, a utopia where nature is sustained by technology. One of the replicants travels back to Earth where she encounters earthlings and heroines who are comic book cut-outs on a toy like landscape. The magic and atmosphere of "Wishful Thinking" is enhanced by the production process where characters are superimposed onto computer graphic and miniature set backgrounds using Ultimatte for the key. Using additional Video Effects (from the Qantel Paint Box, Harry, Encore and Mirage) as an integral part of the storyline, the series of "Wishful Thinking" looks at the relationship between technology and the female creative concern for ecology, role models presented by the media and those of more violent Science Fiction as well as the media's appropriation and manipulation of female symbols.

 
The genre of Science Fiction constantly represents women as stereotypes who are either running from fear; waiting to be saved or seduced. We need another kind of female hero and "Wishful Thinking", like 'Alice in Wonderland', presents the idea that the destiny of the curious female is in her own hands and that her experience of the absurd and the new is simply a means of education. The first episode or pilot set in Australia, is a blend of technology and drama, creating a new type of sci-fi mythology.

Jill Scott 1988