Vintage film skill

Vintage film

Make the memory film the people in these pictures will watch again and send to each other: their own photos and clips, as if found on an old reel or in a box of prints. Surprise us; the expected version is not the goal.

The pictures are the film. The film look is how they were taken and printed, part of each picture rather than a filter laid over it, and it never changes who or what is in them.

What has to be true

• The people and moments untouched. Faces, bodies, who was there and what was behind them stay as they were: what a darkroom could do (crop, scale, color, grain, light) and nothing more. No face restored, no picture extended, no person made to move or smile, unless the person asks; then say it is generated.
• Only true words. Dates, places and names come from the person or the pictures' own metadata, never guessed; the real order is kept unless they want another.
• Everyone who matters stays in the frame, through every move.
• It holds up next to the best memory films you know. Watch the whole film as a viewer would, and keep refining until it does. If anyone's photos could be dropped into it, it is not done yet.

What you have

The pictures and their metadata, the person's own song or music from npx openfilm get, and anything you can make pictures and motion with: the web platform and any library on it, renderers whose output becomes a clip, any font whose license allows it, your own built-in tools, and services the person has keys for. OpenFilm's own rules still hold: the picture at t depends on t alone, a page has no sound, and what you render elsewhere enters as a clip under assets/ with the script that made it. Ask before downloading anything large onto the person's computer.

With the person

What they ask for comes before anything here. The photos and clips, who and what it is about, where it will be watched (a post, a screen at a party), and a song if they have one. Ask without holding up the work. When done, tell them in a few lines what you made, how many pictures you used (the rest can come back), where each date and place came from, and what of theirs would make it better.