Midwater — Work — Thornbury Digital

Fig. 01 Film / WebGL

Deployed and open — nothing on this page is a mockup

I — What it is

The site for a feature documentary about the ocean’s water column, built as the survey record of one descent.

Research-vessel instrument grammar — an echo-sounder strip chart, depth, pressure, light and temperature readouts, station numbering — frames full-bleed 4K cinema footage. The page is the water, deepening from the surface to 640 metres.

II — What was decided

Depth is the governing variable.

Background colour, the audio filter, particle density and every readout derive from one scroll-mapped depth in metres, computed from real physics: pressure is 1 + d/10 atmospheres, light falls as e^−0.046d, temperature follows a thermocline curve.

CheckAny new readout derives from the depth model. Invented numbers break the instrument’s authority.
Two voices only.

Spectral extralight carries the film — the title, station names, narration in italic. Martian Mono carries the instruments — every number, label, date, button and error. A word set in mono is a measurement or a control; a word set in Spectral is the film speaking.
One authored signature: the descent itself.

Letterbox bars open as each of six stations takes the viewport, while depth, water colour, marine snow, the strip-chart marker and the audio lowpass all move on the same scroll-derived value in a single animation loop. Each station is 172 viewport-heights tall with a full-height sticky frame.
Colour has a job.

Phosphor cyan belongs to the sea and its instruments. Amber belongs to the human layer only: the vessel marker, station ids, the active nav state, every call to action, every error. The two are never swapped.

CheckText on video always sits over a scrim or carries a soft dark shadow.
Sound is opt-in, and it remembers.

Web Audio: a surface-waves loop and a deep loop crossfade by depth through one lowpass, 9 kHz at the surface down to 240 Hz at the bottom; station crossings and confirmations fire a synthesized sonar ping. No sound before a user gesture, ever, and the choice persists.
Reduced motion removes the whole apparatus.

Autoplay, WebGL, particles, letterboxing and reveal transitions all go. Confirmations settle inline as italic lines with a manifest code — never a toast, never a modal.

III — What was measured

Stations: 6each 172 viewport-heights, with a full-height sticky frame
Depth: 640 mthe floor of the descent, where the water reaches its darkest
Lowpass: 9 kHz → 240 Hzthe audio filter, driven by the same depth as everything else
Light: e^−0.046dthe attenuation curve every readout is computed from

Fig. 04 — Next

Loam

Good coffee, no theatre.

Depth is the governing variable.

Two voices only.

One authored signature: the descent itself.

Colour has a job.

Sound is opt-in, and it remembers.

Reduced motion removes the whole apparatus.