He was born Avrom Yitzhak Elitski to an orthodox Jewish Lithuanian family in Manchester and raised in Sydney from the age of 3.
[2] Ellitt collaborated with Oswell Blakeston and Francis Bruguière on the film Light Rhythms (1931), composing the live piano score.
[3] In 1942, Ellitt directed the ICI-sponsored Technicolor documentary, This Is Colour, alongside Jack Cardiff and Basil Wright.
Ellitt's work as a composer involved techniques such as drawn sound and musique concrète.
Few of Ellitt's musical compositions are extant today, limiting a fuller perspective on his innovations in the field.
[1] The pieces is identified by Len Lye biographer Roger Horrocks as a piece of soundtrack for an unfinished film collaboration between Lye, Basil Taylor, John Aldridge, Eustace Lewis, Norman Cobb and Ellitt called Quicksilver (1930-1934).
The second of two recordings inspired by the ecological writings of Rachel Carson, this 1987 piece narrates the life of Len Lye with spoken word by Ellitt interspersed with sound construction passages.