Note: These posts appeared in the “blog” early in the project and have been accumulated here for ease of access.  First, a bit of history, then the goals.

After reading Kyle MacDonald’s book, One Red Paperclip, I became convinced I could do something for my family. Swapping a paperclip for a house had been done, so I couldn’t do that. I thought I could trade for one year, just to see what I could come up with, but according to his book, his project took exactly a year. He took both good ideas in one go.

So, inspired by The 1 Second Film and this guy who collected pictures of sheep from around the world, I am beginning Count High.

What is Count High? Count High is a collaborative film project. It works like this: You will send in a picture of a number. This picture can be in any medium you like, but must contain a clearly legible number. Over the course of a year, I will collect all of these images then arrange them sequentially, frame by frame, into a film.

I don’t know how this will help my family, but with my daughters first birthday arriving soon, I thought what better occasion to start something. So that will be the starting date for submissions. Nothing will be accepted sooner. And one year on, for better or worse, the project will end. The film will be assembled, and that, my friends, will be that.

Goals:

Originally, when I first thought of this project I immediately thought, “I bet I could get a million”. Some quick calculations later, I realized that (assuming 25 frames a second) that one number per frame would equal over 11hours. Which is impressive, but far too silly.

Some other calculations later and I realised that even one number per frame for an hour long show (90,000) would be quite a task to accumulate. For 90 minutes, the count also seemed quite high, 135,000, but that sounded like a good length for a movie. Figuring that most movies don’t run for exactly 90 minutes, some to-and-fro later resulted in roughly 82 minutes. That seemed like a good length for a movie and resulted in the nice number and tangible goal of 123,456 (one hundred and twenty-three thousand, four hundred and fifty-six). An incredibly high number, but one which sounds good as a goal and would produce a nice result, if reached.

So even though its a mad goal for a project of strange qualities, I hope that you’ll take the time to do even one number toward the goal.

I think at this point, I should add that it really doesn’t matter if you’re an artist, or if you think you can draw. The idea is to collect “frames” from people of all walks - artists, non-artists, ordinary, real people. Bringing people together. So whether you do a multi-layered, textured, mixed-media number, or if you choose to write “4″ on a piece of paper with a crayon… If we all come together, it can work.

How to get a number:

Even though this has its own page, you should note that to get a number, all you have to do is email with a subject of “I want a number” or something like that.