Wednesday, March 24, 2010

More fun with youtube

So I made another video. It's not exactly steampunk, but it is from 1906 (apparently). Someone stood on the front of a streetcar going down Market Street in San Francisco, and they filmed everything that went by. It's pretty crazy, particularly the lack of traffic laws.

There are a lot of videos that use this film, and also this one, which I like a lot, that juxtaposes the same film with one taken perhaps two weeks later, after the devastating earthquake. The speed in these videos seems to be the speed at which the film was digitized, and I think it looks eerily slow.

Not mine though. I sped it up to the right speed - as we all know, people walked about 25 percent faster back then. It's how the West was won, people! Or it could have had something to do with undercranking the camera and then playing it back at normal speed. Anyway, it's way funnier if you speed it up, and of course, pair it Vernian Process's incomparable version of the Maple Leaf Rag. I picked an arbitrary speed for the video, which then ended up shorter than the song, so I added some remixy parts to fit the music better.

What you end up with is a Where's Waldo of chaos and insanity. As you watch, try to spot the following:

  • 2, possibly 3, newspaper boys
  • 1 newspaper man
  • 2 men nearly getting run over
  • 2 women nearly getting run over (at the same time)
  • 2 horse-drawn wagons nearly getting run over
  • a car driving the wrong way
  • a horse galloping very fast
  • a wagon going the wrong way
  • 4 cars cutting off the streetcar
  • a guy in an apron chasing another guy in an apron
  • 2 guys hanging onto a car
  • a wagon with a skinny horse cutting off a car, and a streetcar
Let me know if I have miscounted, or missed any other funny things.

2 comments:

  1. Ca-wazy wabbits... so where can I see the week later shot after the earthqake... or is that earthcrake?
    Mom

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  2. It's linked in the article. I just checked and it's still working.

    ReplyDelete