This video clip is of a pile driver in action, driving pilings for the upcoming, lux-o-ritzy Waterfront Pearl condo towers. The clip didn't turn out well, and I figured my two choices were a.) to delete it, or b.) to put it on the Internet to annoy the entire world, and possibly get a self-deprecating post (i.e. this one) out of it. Apparently I've chosen option B.
I will be the first to say this is a truly aggravating video clip, for several reasons:
- It's just a shot of a pile driver doing its thing, which is repetitive and inherently boring.
- The clip is sideways, because I goofed and filmed it that way, and I haven't figured out how to rotate video clips.
- It's not self-explaining. If you saw it without reading this post, you'd just be going "Huh? WTF?" and wondering what the point of it all was. Cute videos of kittens don't require anything like this level of explanation.
- It's a static shot from too far away, so it's not visually interesting, and you can't really see what's going on very well.
- The pile driver and chain link fence are ugly, even without the action. Even if this was just a photo, it would still offend the eye.
- The sky is kind of grey and overcast. A truly dedicated filmmaker (which I am not) would've taken one look at the sky, packed it in for the day, and then spent the evening partying and schmoozing with movie stars and financiers and E! reporters and such. I probably ought to have done that, instead of filming this, quite honestly.
- Everyone knows HD is the future, and this clip is far from HD. I don't think the audio is even in stereo, come to think of it.
- The loud, repetitive banging noise is really annoying. Really annoying. Really annoying. Really annoying.
- The video is kind of jerky, because I kept flinching every time the pile driver made that noise again. I couldn't help it. It was even louder than this clip would lead you to believe. Way louder. This jerky video business would've been a great thing maybe ten years ago, but the "NYPD Blue" look is so done anymore.
- What I was really trying to do was pick up not just the sound from the pile driver itself, but the series of nearly-as-loud echoes bouncing off all the nearby condo towers. Where you hear "BANG" on the clip, if you were actually there you'd have heard "BANG-bang---bang", with each coming from a different direction, and with the timing of the echoes varying as you walked down the street and the angles of things changed. In person it was really quite fascinating, but the clip completely fails to convey this. In the future, I will recall that a digital camera is not professional grade audio gear, and that there's no such thing as monaural "surround sound".
1 comment :
Hey, thanks for the video of the noisy culprit. I try to study at home but that thing is just too incessant and loud. I am way up the hill from it but the sound does carry very well. Most mornings by a little after eight it is at work...ugh. Can't imagine being any closer. People who work near it must become insane.
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