jeff watson

TFOTS
City Story Export notes

screen dimensions: 3840×2160
individual frame dimensions: 640 x 480

4 x 3 grid:

HORIZONTAL
gaps between each frame = 256px

number of frames 640*4=2560
screen minus frames 3840-2560=1280
spaces next to frames 1280/5=256

VERTICAL
gaps between each frame = 180px

number of frames 480*3=1440
screen minus frames 2160-1440=720
spaces next to frames 720/4=180

COORDINATES

Premiere, annoyingly enough, uses the center of the image as the point from which it measures its position on-screen.

For example, the coordinates of the frame in the upper left corner of a 4×3 grid would be calculated in the following way:

X COORDINATE
gap between screen edge and frame 256px
+ left half of frame 320px
576px

Y COORDINATE
gap between screen top and frame 180px
+ top half of frame 240px
420px

The horizontal frame point would be at 1472px…

576+320 = 896
896+256 = 1152
1152+320 = 1472

All this can be expressed in simple formulae:

X COORDINATE
[starting point]+(framegap x)+(framewidth)

Y COORDINATE
[starting point]+(framegap y)+(frameheight)

[sp]+256+640
X COORDINATES

576
1472
2368
3264

[sp]+180+480
Y COORDINATES
420
1080
1740

So… all the coordinate pairs for a 4×3 grid are:

576,420 1472,420 2368,420 3264,420
576,1080 1472,1080 2368,1080 3264,1080
576,1740 1472,1740 2368,1740 3264,1740

5 x 4 grid:

HORIZONTAL
gaps between each frame = 106px

number of frames 640*5=3200
screen minus frames 3840-3200=640
spaces next to frames 640/6=106

VERTICAL
gaps between each frame = 180px

number of frames 480*4=1920
screen minus frames 2160-1920=240
spaces next to frames 240/5=48

[sp]+106+640
HORIZONTAL COORDINATES

426
1172
1918
2664
3410

[sp]+48+480
VERTICAL COORDINATES
288
816
1344
1872

All the coordinates for a 5×4 grid:

426,288 1172,288 1918,288 2664,288 3410,288
426,816 1172,816 1918,816 2664,816 3410,816
426,1344 1172,1344 1918,1344 2664,1344 3410,1344
426,1872 1172,1872 1918,1872 2664,1872 3410,1872

These notes, from the 18 September 2008 TFOTS/MEML meeting, collate some of the earliest ideas related to the Million Story Building project. The “ideas to date” section refers to concepts we were trying to develop for SMS-based text cues for improv filmmaking projects. The other snippet here, “city story notes” seems primarily concerned with notions of database-driven cinema archives and the question of motivation (for example, “NASA” refers to a suggestion someone had to make the CityStory archive something that would be sent into space on a flash drive or similar media, the idea being that this would be an inspiring motive for people to participate in the crowdsourced-cinema project we were cooking up). Ultimately, the SMS text-cue experiments and the CityStory crowd-cinema experiment would merge into a single project.

TFOTS
18 Sept 08

ideas to date:

-concrete visual, chain letter, xquisite corpse (“cinerenga”)
-interpretive emergence, charades (“scary face”)
-i ching-style one liners (“oracle”)
-fictional undergrad/blog poster (“zombie”)
-in/out, peach boy (“moviebits”)

-city story notes:
-public good
-see “flickr commons”
-fifth element
-a permanent archive
-NASA?
-permanent installation in lucas building