Gilded Illumination — our demo

One example among many. Don't reuse its story, arc, shots, props or timings.

Demo: Borrowed Light 《借來的光》 (46.8 s) · gilded-illumination.mp4 · source in demo/

A fable built on the material's own physics: gold leaf has no light of its own. In a painted world where everything that shines is gold, the sun goes out one night; a girl carries the last lamp up the mountain, gold wakes beside her and sleeps again behind her; at the top she lifts the lamp to the dark sun and it burns again; the light runs back down the path, and the pull back shows that the whole journey was one painting with five of her in it. Every frame is the painting itself, full screen: no book, no page, no desk. Narration in English (Kokoro bf_emma), with Chinese and English subtitles on a speech scroll.

Story & structure

Logline: gold only gives back the light it is given; one lamp is enough to give the sun its light back.

Arc: the rule (a macro of dark leaf, "everything that shines is gold… but gold has no light of its own") → the crisis (the sun's last glint slides off; one held note) → the hero and her tool (a lamp in a quatrefoil) → the rule made visible (gold lights near her lamp and sinks after it passes) → the goal (the summit, the biggest gold, the darkest) → the touch (the flame meets the leaf, rings of gold spread, the sun burns) → the meaning (a band of light runs down the path, four more of her are painted in layers, the border grows: one picture) → the plaque.

Native moves spent, each one larger than the last: into the material (opening), gold laid, then lit (one star → the leaf around her → a row of fruit → the whole sun → the whole picture), through the frame (the quatrefoil), lit by a lamp (the walk), the touch (the climax), a band of light sweeping the whole picture, painted in layers and continuous narration (the five of her), the border growing into the picture's frame.

Shots

The shots are written on a 51.8 s story clock and played on the 46.8 s film clock through a monotone map (WK in film.js): the walk runs 1.33× faster, the summit is short, the touch is compressed to 0.8 s, the last hold is long. Times below are film time. Camera speeds measured as the median screen-centre travel per second and zoom per second.

# Time Shot Camera Note
1 0–5.4 A macro of dark leaf: squares, seams, punched dots; a narrow glint rakes across from the first frame. It is an eight-pointed star; then ultramarine, more stars, scalloped clouds, spires, a village, the dark sun exponential pull out ×26 → ×0.5 with a little roll (≈200 px/s, 0.74 zoom/s) into the material
2 5.4–11.6 Night wide; a star glints once under a faint band (the rule shown); the sun's last glint slides off its leaf pan and push to the sun (≈320 px/s) the band drops to one held note; match cut on circles: the dark sun → the lamp's glass
3 11.6–16.4 Inside a gold-ground quatrefoil: the lamp (vermilion flame, white-lead core, painted rays), then the girl at a gold-ground chapel; she lifts the lamp and the arch and her hem light; she steps off on "began to climb" pull out inside the frame, then push through the quatrefoil (its lobes slide off the four sides) through the frame
4 16.4–24.4 The walk: a stone bridge with gold roundels lighting one by one, an orchard of gold fruit lighting near her and sinking behind; a near rock pillar wipes across (cut hidden), the camera tilts 6° up the zigzag path and rises through a cloud bank (cut hidden) follow, then crane up (≈250 px/s) lit by a lamp; foreground wipes
5 24.4–28.6 The summit: she is small at lower left, the dark sun fills the upper frame (seams, punched rings, wavy and straight rays, all dark) low angle, almost still 0.6 s of near-silence after the line
6 28.6–33.7 Close-up: the lamp lifted to the leaf; at 30.7 the flame touches, two gold rings spread from the contact, the squares light as they pass, the rays light clockwise; hard cut wide at 31.5: the sun burns, a band crosses the sky right to left, every star flashes in turn follow up, still for the rings, hard cut on the beat, pan with the band the touch; the sky stays deep ultramarine
7 33.7–41.0 The band runs down the path (cloud, zigzag, orchard, bridge, chapel), every piece of gold lights again; in four places another her is painted in layers (lamp gold and its flash → robe and cloak colour, inner rim → ink and white lead), each with a gilded halo; from 38.7 the border grows from the four corners one long pull back and descent to the whole picture painted in layers; continuous narration; the border becomes the frame
8 41.0–46.8 The whole painting held: the five halos light again from the village to the summit, twice; the plaque in the lower border locked; the whole picture still from 38.7 (8.1 s) end card

Transitions: one match cut on circles, one push through a frame, two foreground wipes (a rock pillar, a cloud bank, each wider than the frame at the cut, with an occlusion layer so flashes and lamp glow don't show through), one hard cut on the beat. No dissolves, no page turns.

Voice and subtitles

Ten lines (demo/voice/lines.json), Kokoro bf_emma at speed 0.8 (about 2.45 words a second), each clip checked with core/tts/asr_check.py (line 7's "disc" is heard as "disk" and declared in the asr field; line 8 is "And she lifted her lamp." because the shorter wording was misheard). Each cue holds at least its voice length + 0.6 s (the shortest is 2.45 s).

# Time English (spoken) 中文
1 0.6–4.85 In the painted world, everything that shines is gold. 在這個畫出來的世界裡，會發光的都是金子。
2 5.5–8.65 But gold has no light of its own. 可金子自己不會發光。
3 8.85–11.95 One night, even the sun went out. 有一天夜裡，連太陽也熄了。
4 12.15–16.15 So a girl took the last lamp, and began to climb. 於是一個女孩提起最後一盞燈，開始往山上走。
5 16.6–20.75 Wherever she passed, the gold remembered how to shine. 她走到哪裡，哪裡的金子就想起了怎麼發光。
6 20.9–24.1 Behind her, it fell asleep again. 她一走過，金子又睡著了。
7 24.5–28.5 At the top, the sun was only a cold disc of leaf. 到了山頂，太陽只是一片冰冷的金箔。
8 28.75–31.2 And she lifted her lamp. 她舉起了燈。
9 34.0–37.15 Gold keeps no light of its own. 金子不留自己的光。
10 37.3–40.6 It only gives back what it is given. 它只把得到的，還回去。

The line falls on the picture: line 3 as the sun goes out, "began to climb" as she steps off, line 8 ends 0.1 s before the flame touches, lines 9–10 while the band runs down and the four hers are painted.

The subtitles are drawn by the page as a vellum speech scroll at the bottom centre (Noto Serif SC 36 px over IM Fell English italic 32 px, brown ink), one width for the whole film (the longest line, about 1036 px), the same height and size for every cue; between close cues the scroll stays open, the old words fade and the new ones are pen-wiped on. Shots were composed around it: on the bridge she walks high and to the left, the climb is shot from lower, the close-up of the lifted lamp keeps her left and the sun in the middle, the quatrefoil sits higher, the pull back of shot 7 runs higher. gilded-illumination.srt is written from the same SUBS table (make_srt.py).

Score structure

A small medieval band in D dorian (solo violin for the fiddle, harp, recorder, soft organ for the portative, organ pedal, frame drum, tambourine), bells for the gold (glockenspiel, hand chimes, tubular bells). Sections follow audio.py.

Section Time Palette Notes
Into the leaf 0–5.4 far bell at 0.05, drone, slow harp the leaf shimmers
The sun goes out 5.4–11.6 harp ostinato, plain violin line a bell on the star's glint; at 9.1 the band drops to one held note as the glint slides off
The lamp 11.6–16.4 hand bell at the cut, recorder melody the lantern's ring creaks as she lifts it
The walk 16.4–24.4 frame drum strong/weak on a 0.4 s beat grid, harp eighths one glockenspiel note per piece of gold her lamp wakes, quantised to the eighths, each a step higher
The summit 24.4–28.6 one held note and wind 0.6 s of near-silence right after line 7
The touch 28.6–33.7 timpani, big bell, frame drum at 30.7; the fullest bar, compressed into 0.8 s, on D major (the Picardy third) a second timpani stroke on the hard cut at 31.5
Down the path 33.7–41.0 band in D major a hand bell as each her is painted; a low bell when the border is complete
The plaque 41.0–46.8 held D major a flash on the gilded title, a far bell; 1.4 s fade at the end

Foley is the painted world's own: wind, steps on stone, the lantern's ring, the flame, a brush and a burnishing hiss on the plaque (procedural). Mix: the voice compressed and set about 10 dB over the music by RMS; while she speaks the music loses part of its 300 Hz–4 kHz band; −14 LUFS, true peak −1 dB from core/render/mux.sh. All cue times come from events.json (window.EV), so the score follows any retiming.

Palette & props

How the light was kept in check: the average brightness of the frame stays between about 0.19 (summit) and 0.39 (opening macro) on a 0–1 scale; the ending is brighter only through gold (gold-area brightness ≈ 0.64 at the hold against ≈ 0.32 at the summit). Lit leaf is pulled toward a warm gold with per-channel caps (at most 82% of the way), so it never burns white.

End card

In the plaque in the lower border, part of the painting: Borrowed Light first lettered in red bole, then gilded and flashed (Uncial Antiqua); a line in brown ink "借來的光 · 金箔彩繪 Gilded Illumination" (Noto Serif SC, IM Fell italic); LemoLab × Claude Opus 5.5 in vermilion (IM Fell). The plaque starts at 41.25 and is complete about 4 s before the end; the card then holds still. The "LemoLab × Claude Opus 5.5" sign-off belongs to this library's demo only; a user's film carries no LemoLab credit and no copy of this card.

Build notes

demo/
  build.sh       one command: fonts and voice (if missing) → speech check → events → score and mix → subtitles → picture → master → readcheck → poster, styleframe
  index.html     one canvas, the fonts
  lib.js         math and easing, monotone/track, pigments, the leaf-square gold texture (makeGold, leafAt, leafSquares), gold()/goldStroke() with the glint mask (MK),
                 shape, rimShade, hiLine, triad/pearls/pearlLine (white lead), spirePts, camMatrix, reg() for window.TEXTS
  world.js       the one painted world: leaf() with its dark state, rock clusters and mesas (cluster, mesa, drawSpire), drawSun, trees, chapel, bridge, castle,
                 drawGirl (painted in layers), the lantern, halos, drawBorder (grows from the corners), the end plaque
  film.js        render(t): WK time map, the 8 shots, glintPass (lamps, bands, rings per leaf square, capped gold tone), the quatrefoil, the macro leaf,
                 the speech scroll (SUBS), occlusion for the hidden cuts, window.EV for the sound, window.TEXTS
  audio.py       score, foley and voice from events.json → out/mix.wav
  make_srt.py    the .srt from SUBS in film.js
  voice/         lines.json (Kokoro bf_emma 0.8; clips are recorded to out/voice/)
  fonts/         make_fonts.py (Noto Serif SC subset for the Chinese on screen) and the OFL licence texts