A bunch of remote controlled plane enthusiasts calling themselves Team Black Sheep shot some great aerial footage of New York. These are the sorts of views we mere mortals would have to steal a helicopter in GTA IV to see. Whatever it is that’s blocking the bottom right of the camera’s view is a bit distracting, but otherwise this is awesome footage.
Can I have one of these to fly around the Lakes when I’m at home some time? Wasdale comes to mind first, but there are a load of other neat valleys I could take it through.
I could forgive all those people who drape pointless lights over their houses at this time of year if they had the imagination to choreograph the display like this.
I find myself re-watching C’etait Un Rendezvous at least once a year for various reasons. Today it’s because of an idea I had last night.
In Rendezvous a film camera was strapped to the front bumper of a Mercedes and the film’s director, Claude Lelouch, drove it at speed through early morning Paris, ending up at Montmartre. My idea is that, as camera equipment has become so much lighter over the years, you could fasten a camera to a bike and, starting where the original ended, do a similarly mad early morning ride. There’s no way it could follow the same route, so it would have to finish at a landmark, ideally the Eiffel tower or at least the banks of the Seine with a view of the tower. I’ve only visited the city once, off the top of my head I can’t come up with an exact route.
Then my idea expanded a touch. Several manufacturers, such as Panasonic, are releasing 3D capable consumer video cameras. Wouldn’t shooting such a film with one of their cameras make for a great promo. I may have to put together a proposal.
I’d need a middle weight full suspension mountain bike- it wouldn’t have to be as tough as a full on downhiller- and a pro or semi-pro downhill rider to ride it, an apartment near the start point for a few weeks to use as the base of operations, and a 3D telly to watch the rushes on. And maybe their legal department, but I’d try to avoid that. Paris isn’t that hilly a city, but it’s where you’d want to film if it was to be a proper homage. Other ideas were to shoot it in Edinburgh or San Francisco. I’m sure there are other hilly cities.
And, because there’s no way I could mention it without including it, here’s C’etait Un Rendezvous-
Rishi Sowa has built himself a floating island using plastic bottles, netting and plywood, with mangrove helping to hold it all together. Find out more at spiralislanders.com.
This interests me because I’ve recently gone back to Heavensent, the propellerpunk tale I wrote a few years ago, with a view to revising and expanding it. Early in the tale some of the characters are trapped on a floating island which has evolved in a section of a vast ocean where the eddies of the current have trapped lots of flotsam. The idea was that algae had trapped seeds which had sent out roots, further binding things together, until a floating landmass had been formed. As the tale is set at a time of lower technological advancement than today it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine some of the starting material being wood and other biodegradable materials. This shall feed back into the Heavensent rewrite.
is available over here, but the films it mentions (that I’ve looked for) are all available only as Region 2 or Region 4.
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