Conceptual and technical considerations behind the two versions of
"The Death of Dr. Van Der Hoven"

First came the video. Completed in the summer of 1996, it is a part of "LOOK AT MY SCREEN", a 6 film collection by A. Molotkov/S.B. Reda. A number of measures were taken to give the video that scary and old-fashioned look. First, the footage was converted to black and white (with a brown tint added). Then, a tape with various visual effects was superimposed over the entire Master to create the impression of imperfection characteristic of old motion pictures. Several experimental editing techniques were put to use to complete the production and create the desired progression in the tempo.

When it came down to music, Pamela Zero and Herb Heinz decided to record their parts separately. Both used the completed video to build their improvisations on. When the resulting tracks were played together, all participants were astonished by the perfect fit! A posteriori, it is difficult to believe that the sound was actually recorded the way it was.

The work on the web presentation of "The Death of Dr. Van Der Hoven" began in December 1997. The main challenge was quite straightforward: if the video, which is approximately 15 minutes long, uses 15*60*30 = 27,000 frames, what percentage of this amount can be preserved? A compromise between the bandwidth limitations and the esthetic requirements imposed by the project was required. A total of about 200 images was digitized, and about 150 of them went into the final version. So, how does one create a compatible effect with only 0.5% of the material?

A decision was made to depart from the "one screen" structure. Instead, nine virtual screens were used, all of which are both moveable and sizable. The video contained no merges (apart from the aforementioned addition of visual effects - or, to be specific, defects). To maintain the general look, no merges (or, in this case, transition filters) were used. Instead, several custom procedures were written to give what is essentially a series of still images a "moving" look.

The next challenge had to do with the fact that rigidly timed Script often proves unreliable, as the time it takes your screen to display an image, or to move it in one manner or another, may actually depend on how old and tired your computer is, as well as on some seemingly random factors. This is why it was impossible to place the entire presentation on a rigid time line: considering the total length of approximately 15 minutes (almost exactly the same as the video), a major discrepancies could have arisen. Instead, a recurring procedure was used.  In this procedure, as soon as one image is done displaying, the next one is shown: a relative relationship instead of an absolute one. An additional advantage of this approach is the ability to insert an image of several images in the middle without having to re-enter the times for everything that follows.

This completed the basic preparations and lead to the second phase: manual building of the sequence. With well over a thousand of "shots" (some of them repeated, of course), this was an arduous task, but then, after all, so had been the video editing. Some tricks helped out with the second part of the presentation, but revealing them here would be imprudent: if you have not seen "The Death of Dr. Van Der Hoven" yet, you might want to do so, and if you have, than you already know about these tricks.

Initially, five Active Movie controls were used, delivering several looping segments of the soundtrack. In November 1998 these were replaced by a Windows Media Player control, and the entire soundtrack has been encoded, resulting in a 2.5 Mb streaming file (high-bandwidth version) and 800 Kb (low bandwidth). The images take about 800 Kb in total size.

Any comments and technical suggestions are welcome! Please e-mail the author.