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Project: The Inn at Victorian Gardens, Bed & Breakfast Inn
Media/Software: Macromedia’s Flash MX Shockwave Animation
Client: The Inn at Victorian Gardens
Creative Talent:
poem by Theresa Whitehill
Photography by Olaf Beckmann
Designed and Produced by Theresa Whitehill, Colored Horse Studios
Content: Twelve images alternating with poetic text, evoking the charm and spirit of the accommodations and dining for the Inn at Victorian Gardens, located in Manchester, California.
Features: Photographs were originally shot by Beckmann as 8x10 format black and white film, intended for Platinum prints.
Challenge: Convey the artistic mood and relaxed pace of an inn whose owners come to hospitality from medicine (Luciano Zamboni) and architecture (Pauline Zamboni), and who have created a hospitality business dedicated to old world values, promoting the arts of conversation and gracious living. The Inn at Victorian Gardens won recognition from Zagat Survey in 2003, receiving the highest rating out of 935 dining establishments for Luciano's authentic Italian cuisine and Pauline's decor and service.
The Result: A website based on a series of dreamy, elegant black and white images which slowly dissolve into and out of an epistolary text describing a visit to the Victorian Gardens inn by a mythical guest. From beginning to end, the viewer is deliberately invited to sit back and enter the mood; there being no option to skip ahead, speed it up, or jump around. The loss of impatient viewers is a deliberate screening device, as the inn is set up for guests who have a certain attention span which goes against the grain of most web concepts.
One viewer wrote: "I want to visit the Victorian Gardens with a lover. I must! This website absolutely draws you in. Everything about it is gently sensual, romantic, Mendocino coast beautiful, wonderfully personal - the writing and photography, of course, but even the color palette, the timing of the transitions, the font - the total production. I starting out thinking I'm too busy, I don't have 12 minutes and then after the first few slides I found myself easing back in my chair, smiling, even a sigh escaping once or twice, and I was there. When it was over, I felt like I wanted to go back to the beginning and experience it all again. Thank you! - C. White, 5/03
Specifications:
Size: Proportions related to the full frame photographs within a 1024 x 768 browser window
Scans: Olaf Beckmann
Colors: Photographs were converted from black and white to RGB based on Platinum print colors
Typefaces: Bickham Script (logotype), Bodoni (heading), Aquiline (text)
ISP: Verio
Spring 2003
Text Copyright ©2003, Theresa Whitehill, all rights reserved
Photography Copyright ©2003, Olaf Beckmann, all rights reserved
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