04 · Create an experience · Scroll-film
A desert Saturday, told one mile at a time.
Old Pueblo is a cinematic, scroll-controlled flight from first light in the saguaros through monsoon weather and Kitt Peak darkness, ending under the lights at Arizona Stadium.
The problem
A place is more than a sequence of pretty images.
A desert drive can pass through radically different moods in a single day. A conventional gallery would show the scenes but lose the transition—the feeling of moving from quiet first light toward a shared destination.
The experience needed to make travel itself the navigation while leaving enough space for each stop to say something meaningful.
The solution
Let distance control the film.
Scrolling maps directly onto a 52.367-second master timeline. Four narrative chapters—desert, monsoon, Kitt Peak, and stadium—use weighted scroll bands so the pace can change without breaking the continuity of the road.
A visible Fly control can play the route automatically. Wheel, touch, or keyboard input returns control to the visitor. Chapter copy and progress markers orient the journey without turning it into a menu.
Defensible proof
The experience is the case study.
The full project is publicly deployed. Its four stops, film scrub, Fly control, progress rail, and responsive presentation can be tested directly rather than represented by a static mockup.
Technical details
The primary renderer progressively fetches 1,571 WebP frames and decodes a window around the current frame to keep the canvas responsive. Browsers without createImageBitmap fall back to scrubbing a single master MP4.
The scroll geometry is piecewise rather than uniform: every segment has its own weight and maps to a bounded section of film time. A reduced-motion media query removes the automatic Fly control.