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notes on converting two GIFs to ambient-style video pieces. in the real world these would both be on CRT screens (for the toronto collaboration with john parker). the bleaching on the TV images on the left is just my digicam not being able to shoot the screen.
bathtub sticker animation (222 X 345, sized at 450 X 700 in the video). the red circles on the left and right are outside the title safe area, but it looks OK cropped like that, don't want to shrink it anymore than I have to. the frame rate is the same on the GIF and the video, 20 fps; don't think it needs to go faster.
spinning disc animation: originally sized at 350 X 348, white background: [.mov file stopped working -- thanks, Apple -- here is a 97 KB GIF]
sized at 441 X 442 for video, black background: [.mov file stopped working -- thanks, Apple -- here is a 144 KB GIF]. The larger .mov looks much better on video than it does on the web. the .web mov spins more regularly than the TV version; on the TV the disc is slowing down and speeding up slightly, as if the equipment were struggling to keep up with the high frame rate (100 frames per second in the original GIF--30 fps in the video--the max TV allows). this "wowing" is good--it makes the disc more alive, like it has a will of its own, but is constantly on the verge of breaking down. i let it loop for three minutes and when it hits the "chapter repeat" point the image briefly freezes, then revs back up to full speed as fast as it can. it looks like a little vibrating bitcrushed planetoid, i'm especially happy with how this one came out as a video piece.
Update: the music that goes with this video pair is here.
After the addition of the former Borg drone Seven of Nine to the starship's crew at the start of the fifth Star Trek series' fourth season, Voyager's weekly viewer ratings soared by more than 60%... [T]he character was an instant success, and "saved the show" from disorientation and even oblivion. The Emergency Medical Hologram's dermoplastic grafting procedures and follicle stimulation therapies produced a highly sexualized feminine bodily appearance that appealed especially to adolescent and young males, a major portion of Star Trek's viewership. Seven's arrival on the scene was accompanied by a massive publicity campaign in TV magazines and newspaper supplements. Played by a former Miss America pageant finalist Jeri Ryan, outfitted in a skintight, lustrous catsuit and high heels that accentuate her breasts and buttocks, Seven of Nine radiates "available feminine sexuality," yet is paradoxically unaware of her "epidermal" exposure and blatant desirability. Her erect phallic posture, techno-scientific competence, stringently business-like speaking style, and indifference towards male erotic overtures make her an ambivalent boundary crosser with both masculine and feminine semiotic and manneristic attributes.--from Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance, by Alan N. Shapiro (the Bible)