Cold Start — the film

Four minutes and thirty five seconds of real-time graphics, cut to a 192 BPM drum and bass set, played start to finish by a camera nobody drives.

Press play on scenes.main. The clock starts at zero and runs 275 seconds. Twelve parts play back to back, each one a world that builds itself when the clock reaches it and clears itself when the clock leaves. Every cut lands on a barline of the score, so every cut is a drop.

What you see, in order

#	part	length	what it is
1	COLDSTART	25s	the title sequence: black, magenta, cyan, white strike-cuts
2	FRESH CUT	22.5s	a bright midday estate; a mower carves the mark into the lawn
3	SIMULATION	25s	a field of particles finding four shapes in the dark
4	REVOLUTION	22.5s	chrome and neon under a sun that never sets
5	CRAWLER	22.5s	a creature of black fluid hauling itself through a crystal cave
6	COLLAPSE	22.5s	five storeys of brick and steel, and a forged ball
7	CLOUDSURF	25s	dawn over a sea of cloud, and a rider carving it
8	SNOWLINE	20s	an alpine run: carved, jumped, slid
9	FONTAINE	22.5s	a water show on an oval lake at dusk
10	DISCHARGE	22.5s	a million volts in an empty hall at night
11	ASCENSION	35s	up through the weather, into the night, for the credits
12	ENDCARD	10s	the card

How it is made

Every asset in the film is generated inside the engine while it runs. There are no imported scene meshes for the film itself: the grass, the creature, the building, the water, the arcs, the dunes and the type are all built when the clock reaches them and released when it leaves, so no two parts are ever in memory together.

The score is generated the same way. It is written as code, rendered by a synthesizer that runs in the engine, and then analysed, so the lights, the materials and the action across all twelve parts ride the band energies and the named cues of the music rather than a hand-keyed timeline.

Reading it

spec.md beside this file is the shot list and the timing contract: every shot's length, its lens, its camera and what moves in it. ../scenes/main.scene/README.md is the map of the running order and the rules a part plays by. ../preseed/MUSIC.md is the score.

Made with the Zero engine. origozero.ai