Film Jar
A weekly ritual for training your eye. A hundred
and twenty films chosen for visual literacy, sealed in a jar.
Pull one a week. The jar locks for seven days after each pull,
and there are no swaps.
On how it was built
I chose the hundred and twenty films, wrote the rules and designed the thing; the code was iterated with an AI assistant (Claude) rather than written line by line. The judgement calls are mine: what goes in the jar, that the lock is seven days, that there are no swaps, that an override exists anyway, and that a film you add becomes indistinguishable from the rest once it is in. Same working method as Plastilin, the illustration on Maramao and the renders on Milano Futura.
1 / What it had to do
Designers say they should watch more film and then don't,
or they watch ten in a weekend and retain none of it.
The problem is not access, it is cadence and choice.
Too much choice and the evening goes on scrolling;
no structure and it never becomes a habit. This had to remove
both — decide for you, then stop you deciding again for a week.
2 / The idea
The constraint is the product. A hundred and twenty films
curated for visual literacy — composition, lighting, colour —
go into the jar. You pull one. Then it locks for seven days.
No swaps, no re-rolls, no browsing the list. The lock is
the discipline, and it is the reason the ritual works:
a random film you cannot trade is a film you actually watch.
3 / How the jar works
Everything runs in the browser and stores locally —
pull history, what you have watched, anything you add.
You can put your own films in, filed by era, and once
added they become real slips in the jar: pulled at random
and indistinguishable from the curated ones.
There are statistics, a pull cadence setting, a full reset,
and an override for the seven-day lock. The override
is there on purpose. A rule you cannot break is a rule
people resent; a rule you can break but have to choose
to break is one they keep.
- 120 curated films
- Weekly pull
- Seven-day lock
- Watch and mark
- Add your own
- Local storage
The rules
Pull
One film a week. The jar chooses,
you don't.
Lock
Seven days after each pull. There is an override,
but you have to decide to use it.
No swaps
You watch what you got. And then answer questions that
help you to reflect about movie.
Add your own
Filed by era, then indistinguishable
from the rest once it is in.
Reset
Empty the jar and start again.
How the films
are filed
Foundations, 1960s -2020s, visual essays, yours
Four groups, and the last one is yours. Anything you add is pulled at random
alongside the curated hundred and twenty.