Thermal Camera — our demo

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

Demo: A Building on a Winter Night (冬夜，一棟樓的體溫, 49 s) · thermal-camera.mp4 · source in demo/

Story & structure

On a snowy winter night a thermal camera goes round an old six-storey brick-and-concrete apartment block: a scan line turns the street into heat; the floor slabs, the radiator niches and one leaking third-floor window light up; inside the wall the heating risers show like veins; below, one parked car has a warm bonnet, and on it sleeps an orange cat that lifts its head, looks at the camera and settles again; up on the roof the snow has melted where insulation is missing and two flues breathe hot exhaust. A year later the same building, retrofitted, is shown beside last winter's image on the same scale: the facade is darker, the leak is gone, the estimated heat loss falls from 187 kW to 73 kW (−61 %). A scan line takes us back to the visible night: the renovated block, its windows lit, the cat still on the bonnet. No people are drawn; residents exist only as lit windows and a stairwell light climbing floor by floor.

The building, its residents and the survey dates are invented; the material constants, the retrofit rules, the survey conditions and the heat-loss estimate are sourced in demo/FACTS.md.

Why it fits: building-envelope inspection at night is the most common real job of a thermal camera, and every instrument used (spot, box, isotherm, span, before/after on one scale) belongs to that job. Native moves spent: scan line (opening, the cat, the ending), travelling split (the veins), level/span (veins), isotherm (the leak), hot-spot tracker (the cat's eyes), same-scale comparison (the verdict).

Shots

# Time Shot Camera Native move / note
1 0.0–4.6 Snowy street, the block with scattered lit windows frontal from across the road, slow push scan line left → right; the building "ignites" (signature)
2 4.6–10.2 Thermal facade: bright windows, slab bands, radiator niches; spot meters on the third-floor window head (5.1 °C) and the brick wall (−4.7 °C); "slab thermal bridge" label crane up and push toward the third floor
3 10.2–16.2 Isotherm > 8 °C turns the leak green; box "air leak, max 17.5 °C"; its crosshair is pinned to the hottest point of the leak on the wall zoom from 38° to 16° onto the window, then hold isotherm
4 16.2–22.6 Visible left, thermal right; span narrows to −8…+2 °C and the risers, branches and returns show; labels "heating riser", "behind the radiator" lateral truck along floors 1–3, fixed split travelling split + span (signature)
5 22.6–29.6 Row of snow-covered cars; one wet bonnet; scan right → left; bonnet 10.5 °C, cat 15.0 °C; the cat lifts its head, eyes open, the max marker jumps to the eyes (34.4 °C) and stays pinned on the left eye as the head moves, a meow, it turns and settles descend from 2.6 m and push in high over the bonnet scan line + hot-spot tracker (signature)
6 29.6–35.2 Crane over the parapet: snow-covered roof, melted patches (−2.4 °C) where insulation is missing, a working flue (22.4 °C) crane up, tilt down to a near top view
7 35.2–43.4 Before (2024-12-19) and after (2025-12-17) side by side on one scale: facade average −4.6 → −5.8 °C, window gap max 9.4 → −1.6 °C, heat loss 187 → 73 kW; verdict "heat loss −61 %" at 40.4 locked; the frame squeezes into two halves at 36.6, all in frame by 37.4 judgement frame, held 3.0 s before the verdict
8 43.4–49.0 After-image fills the frame; cut to the cat on the bonnet a year on; scan back to visible while pulling back to the renovated block, windows lit, a stairwell light climbing pull back and land at 45.4 end card 45.5–49.0

Score structure

D minor, 72 BPM where there is a pulse. 0–4.6 bowed vibraphone and glass harp swelling under the scan; 4.6–16.2 harp eighths over a cello pedal (Dm–B♭–Gm–A), violin tremolo from the isotherm alarm; 16.2–22.6 a contrabass pizzicato heartbeat (lub-dub once a second) with a slow cello line for the veins; 22.6–29.6 D major for the cat: glockenspiel and harp, sparse, ducked under the meow; 29.6–35.2 strings rise with the crane; 35.2–40.4 a held fifth while the report is read; 40.4 the verdict lands on D major (strings, horn, harp roll, vibraphone, soft gran cassa); 43.4–end the cat motif again and a last harp chord on the end card. Foley: wind (louder on the roof), camera fan, scan sweeps, lock beeps with tick rolls, isotherm two-tone alarm, span click, detector shutter clacks at 8.2, 20.6 and 33.9 s, water gurgling in the pipes, fur rustles and one recorded meow (CC0). Mix (audio.py): −16.1 LUFS integrated, −3.2 dBTP, music ducked 3–5 dB under readouts; mux.sh masters the film to −14 LUFS with the true peak at or under −1 dBTP.

Palette & props

Iron palette as in STYLE.md; ranges −9…+7 °C (facade), −8…+2 °C (veins), −10…+36 °C (cat), −12…+6 °C (roof); isotherm green. Night picture: sodium lamps (2000 K), warm and cool window lights, blue-grey snow. The building: three stair units, 39.6 × 10.8 m, six floors of 2.8 m on a 0.45 m plinth, exposed red brick in three-stretcher-one-header bond with grey ring beams, enclosed balconies with mixed steel/aluminium/PVC frames, AC units, window cages on the lower floors, drying poles, corrugated awnings, downpipes, sagging telecom cable, green steel unit doors with lamps and "1單元" signs, "7號樓" plate; after the retrofit, beige render with darker bands and white PVC windows. Six lofted 1980s-style sedans, four bare trees, two lamp posts, neighbouring blocks, an overcast sky, falling snow. The cat: an orange tabby, about 45 cm curled.

End card

"冬夜，一棟樓的體溫 / A Building on a Winter Night / 熱成像 / Thermal Camera / LemoLab × Claude Opus 5.5", top left over the night sky of the final visible frame, 45.5–49.0 s (3.5 s: the title needs 3.34 s at the library's reading speed). The sign-off belongs to this library's demo only.

Build notes