The Old Asylum: an abandoned hospital at night

Every look of the visualizer is a place in the same old building: The Long Corridor, The Empty Ward, The Nurses' Station, The Records Room, The Building at Night and The Old Cage Lift. Open it from its template page, in Classic or Studio, as the look of a Timeline clip, or as a layer over another look; the preview, the still and every export draw the same frames.

The building is the story. The chill comes from the place itself: a lantern's light, fog along the floor, doors and drawers easing open on the beat, sheets and papers drifting where no one is.

• Open the The Old Asylum template

Each look is a place in the building:

• The Long Corridor: The long corridor walked by lantern light: doors passing on both sides and easing open on the beat, a lamp glowing far off, fog along the floor and, on the drop, a wheelchair rolling slowly across.
• The Empty Ward: The empty ward under the moon: made beds in rows, the curtains between them swaying, and a sheet lifting from the far bed to drift up into the moonlight.
• The Nurses' Station: The nurses' station after hours: the call board lighting a room's lamp on each beat, the telephone's receiver lifting, papers rising off the counter.
• The Records Room: The records room: rows of filing cabinets, a drawer sliding out on each beat, and on the drop the files swirling round the room under the swinging bulb.
• The Building at Night: The building from the grounds at night: its windows lighting one by one with the beat, the clock tower keeping the song's time, bare trees swaying and fog on the lawn.
• The Old Cage Lift: The old cage lift: the scissor gate easing open on the drop, the floor dial's needle climbing and coming back down, the cables running and the bulb swinging.

On every beat something in the building eases: a door, a drawer, a curtain, the telephone's receiver, as far as the Creak setting lets it, settling back over the beat. The light rises with the song's energy. On the drop of an analysed song the building stirs: a wheelchair rolls across the corridor, the files swirl, the lift's gate eases open, the sheet rises higher.

Everything moves a whole number of times each phrase of your song (eight bars), so with no song analysis a phrase-long clip starts and ends on the same frame and loops without a seam.

It is eerie, never gory. No one is shown and nothing is hurt, nothing jumps out, and no word in it mocks mental illness: the building is old and empty, and the people who were cared for there are not part of the scare.

The lantern, the lamps and the moonlight rise and fall slowly through the flash limiter, which holds flashes to fewer than three a second; nothing flickers. The floor tiles, the beds, the call board, the drawers, the windows and the lift's gate repeat, so each asks the site's pattern guard how much contrast it may have. The Contrast setting lowers it all further.

Beside the colours, speed, glow and the settings every look has, the visualizer has its own, labelled the same in every editor, and SW Agent can set each one by its name:

• Fog: How thick the fog along the floor is. 0 clears it. From 0 to 1.
• Drift: How many sheets and papers drift through the air, and how far. From 0 to 1.
• Creak: How far doors, drawers, curtains and the telephone ease on the beat. From 0 to 1.5.
• Lantern: How bright the lantern, the lamps and the moonlight are. They rise with the song and never flash. From 0 to 2.
• Dust: Dust drifting in the light and the puff round the lantern on the beat. From 0 to 1.

Ask for it in your own words: "an abandoned hospital at night", "a haunted asylum for my track", "a long dark corridor" or "an old cage lift", and SW Agent builds the project on it. In an open project, say "switch to the records room", "more fog" or "less creak"; each change is one step of undo in Classic and in Studio.

Through our MCP server, get_engine lists the visualizer's places and settings, and build_editor_setup opens Classic or Studio on any of them.