Year: 1965
Format: 35mm Black & White
Runtime: 4 min
Director: Pierre Hébert
Producer: Robert Verrall
Animation: Pierre Hébert
Production Company: National Film Board of Canada

Pierre Hébert’s first National Film Board production is an experiment in intermittent, scratched-on-film animation that shows Hébert exploring the possibilities of the computer before the new technology came into regular use at the NFB. Twenty-four positive and negative images are arranged and re-arranged in various combinations; the result is an ever-evolving pattern of images and sounds with its own distinct rhythm.

Op Hop–Hop Op, which won awards at film festivals in Montreal and Melbourne, marked Hébert’s first foray into computerized animation and laid the groundwork for other early experiments with the medium, such as Bernard Longpré’s Test 0558 (1965) and Hébert’s own Around Perception (1968).