Well . . . something is better than nothing, right? That was my thought exactly as I pondered a long-overdue web version of the classic post-graduate Mizpah multimedia extravaganza, 253 Frames. (Or, in its full title--as Shawn is certain to point out--Mizpah Presents: 253 Frames.) As a slide show with soundtrack, this production seems perfectly suited to the low-bandwidth requirements of the web. There's even an experimental streaming version of the soundtrack kicking around.
But available technology is always the limiting factor. We have the working text script, but (unlike Less Miserable) this script alone does not make for absorbing reading. We have all of the original slides, but no slide scanner. And so on. Thus 253 Frames lingered as a promise on my old web page for three years or so.
Now, however, a new computer has come into my life. It has built-in video capturing on its display card. And as I was testing said card one night, I wound up grabbing still frames from my old, crummy VHS recording of the final midnight showing of 253 Frames way back in 1991. When the smallish pictures are combined with the script, the result starts to begin to approximate a small fraction of a portion of the magic, the life-changing experience, that is 253 Frames. Sorry--Mizpah Presents: 253 Frames.
CAVEATS
If you are brave enough to venture further, I must point out that you're going to be reading the first draft script, and that the illustrative pictures are small and, worse still, very dark. Most annoying of all, the pictures vary in brightness. This is because the pictures you are seeing are vidcaps from a VHS camera which was pointed at a screen as the show was performed live, and the two slide projectors we were using had different luminosities. The difference was negligible to the audience, but the camera registered the images from the two projectors as being significantly different.
Many more caveats could be pled regarding the quality of the writing . . . but there's not enough time.