Ways out of the room
For half a day the site was a film: start in a stained-glass room in 1824, and break out into a neon future.
By the second morning the three pieces were live and linked, and the navigation had grown two menus that disagreed. The fix was to draw the whole site map in the conversation, then decide: the front door would be the room, with two equal buttons, Walk up to the window and Step into the future.
i think you now understand my journey from the 1800s to the 2000s
Sep 30, 11:41
Arrivals
The arrival on Light roads was storyboarded second by second, and it had problems: a hard cut, a poster that seemed to run backwards, too much on screen at once, and nothing that said “future.” Four fixes were built side by side, and the best of them landed you straight on the fully lit neon county.
Breaking the glass
Then: “smash through the window to expose the tron filled-map as ‘the future’.” The shards break along the county’s 128 assessor map sheets, and they land on the lit county below. That opened the floodgates.
walking up to the city-glass is meh
Sep 30, 12:00
Walking through the county glass, though, and watching the parcels break around you, “could be good.” A journey lab went up so every version could sit side by side, with thumbs up and down and a button to copy the picks, “no judgement.” It grew to sixteen ways out of the room:
- Light and fades (10): a flare to white, a fade, a sunset, walking into the glass, a sun sweep, noon, the glass glowing, dust, an iris, a hard cut.
- Breaking glass (3): smash the window, break out the city, walk through the county glass.
- Into the void (3): the golden thread, the neon behind the glass, and glass breaking forward.
Into the void
The golden thread. “The entire city shatters out of the county glass, leaving the golden border and the river kind of just there.” Behind it there’s no sunlight, “just a black void masked by the remaining city border,” and the camera flies through it into Glass rain.
The neon behind the glass. The city breaks out to show Light roads’ lit county exactly behind the window, then the rest of the glass falls away, and the camera eases into Light roads’ own first view. Matching that view took a careful search, because leaning the camera made a simple rescale wobble. Then a pour was added behind the glass: the neon starts dark and fills out from downtown the instant the glass breaks, or in from the county’s edges.
Glass breaks forward. “The shards come at us while missing us.” Every piece of the window flies into the room and past the camera, at least a metre clear, the walls fade, and the neon fades in.
it’s getting to be fine cinema
Sep 30, 12:31
Why we set them aside
After a break, the next ask was simple: “lets try one that doesn’t begin at the room … i’m trying to land properly first.” That landing, the next chapter, was judged “honestly really good” within the hour, and by evening, “gorgeous.” The room had become a beautiful detour.
the ‘journey lab’ div can go, we’re not journeying thru this
Sep 30, 19:38
Nothing was thrown away. All sixteen exits are still in the room’s code, behind a switch, waiting for a review at the end. The two-site idea, the past and the future at two addresses, is still in the idea bank.
- The site map redrawn: the room as the front door.
- Smash through the window.
- The journey lab, ten exits.
- Break out the city; walk through the county glass.
- The golden thread, and the void.
- The neon behind the glass; glass breaks forward; the pours.
- Sixteen ways out of the room.
- “Let’s try one that doesn’t begin at the room.”