Tag Archive for 'Car'

Tilt Shift USA: Everyone Is A Little Universe


(View and comment (!) on vimeo)

It’s here! The tilt shift miniature test footage we shot during our 3 month research road trip across and back the United States in the fall of 2009. Watch it now in glorious HD and full screen! This was our first try at it and it was shot mainly to explore on settings, locations and motion. Of course some shots are working great, others less great ;) We’ve learned a lot and it helps tremendously in developing the storyboard for the actual stereoscopic 3D tilt-shift shoot of THE AMERICAN BACKROOM in 2011. BTW, We are currently in talks with tilt shift miniature-artists (some of them you might know) to get them and their talent aboard for the production.

But so far this is what we got. Enjoy!

Kudos to The Wind-Up Robots Killed My Cat who provided the beautiful music (and also the title).

Here’s a list of locations seen in the clip (in order of appearance):

    San Francisco, CA | Louisana State Route 14S | Grand Chenier, LA | Calexico, CA | New Orleans, LA | San Francisco | Grand Canyon, AZ | Los Angeles, CA | Palm Springs, CA | Hollywood, CA | Santa Monica, CA | outside Slab City, CA | Coleman, OK | San Francisco | Camp Verde, AZ | Monterey, CA | Lavina, MT | Santa Monica again | Melrose, NM | Santa Monica | Austin, TX | outside Bakersfield, CA | Page, AZ | Austin | Santa Cruz, CA | Austin again | Hollywood | Austin again and agian | New Orleans | Austin | Page | Austin | Santa Cruz

Powered by CANON

by Admin | June 7, 2010 | 4 Comments
Cinematography, Research and Travel

Watch this: L.A. without the cars

What if tomorrow everyone’s car just disappeard? That was the question that Ross Ching asked himself. As an answer he came up with the following video in which he got rid of all the cars in L.A.. It’s the city of 12-lane-superhighways without the cars. Without the trucks. Without any motorized vehicle… Take a look.


(Click here to watch directly on vimeo and in HD!)

by Alex | May 27, 2010 | 0 Comments
Inspiration

American Van

Joe Stevens documents surviving vans in the southwest and captures a bit of living space harking back to 70s America. A marvelous study in American design asthetics, color and its surrounding environment that also provides a little getaway into warmer realms, especially with current temperatures outside.

by Alex | January 28, 2010 | 0 Comments
Images, Links and USA

Timetravel to Los Angeles

Over at Skyscrapercity.com they have collected many many great pictures from the Los Angeles before time, at least before my time… from the fifties, fourties, thirties, twenties, heck, some of them are even older, yet. Great stuff indeed!

by Alex | January 8, 2010 | 0 Comments
Images, Links and Research

Melvin

English version coming soon…


For larger versions of these images please visit our Flickr-set.

by Alex | October 10, 2009 | 0 Comments
Images, People, Research and Travel

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Alamo

Today we finally booked a rental car. After long hours of comparing quotes from different agencies we finally settled for you. Your quote just couldn’t be beaten by any of your competitors. We also realized, it’s not that easy to rent a car for a period of 61 days. But it’s possible with you, so thanks for that already. We’ve rented an intermediate SUV at a phenomenal rate of 1,900 dollars including all insurances, collission damage waivers and additional drivers! Good job, Mr. and Mrs. Alamo.

But that’s not the only reason I’m writing to you. I’m sure you can already guess that there is something I also wanna complain about.

Let’s talk about Alamo locations and their office hours in New York. I just can’t think of a reason, why Alamo does not run offices at any of the airports in the New York area. You know, we are not landing in New York City, but at the Newark Liberty Int’l Airport on the other side of the Hudson. If Alamo does not need to run an office in Newark, that’s fine. But what about JFK or LaGuardia? Nope. You can’t find Alamo anywhere near those. I mean, we’d be willing to travel across half the city, to get our rental car at JFK. But no. Would be pointless.

Not so in Manhattan: Obviously you need to have even six offices there! And almost all are located in rather close vicinity. What kind of business strategy is that? Or wasn’t enough left for the airports, after you paid all the rent in Manhattan?

I know what you are thinking right now: Better for us, since we won’t have to travel all the way from Newark to JFK.

I wish! But it’s even worse. We are landing in Newark shortly after 9 PM. By that time all your Manhattan locations are already closed for more than 3 hours! Not that you not only don’t run any airport offices in and around New York City, your office hours in Manhattan are not very helpful either! Monday thru thursday till 6 PM, saturdays only till 2:45 PM! In New York City. The Big Apple! Metropolis! Gotham City! N-E-W Y-O-R-K! The city that never sleeps, dammit. I am not even talking about Boise, Idaho, where by the way Alamo is operating till 9 PM seven days a week! And I remember getting rental cars from Alamo at far smaller airports even past midnight!

Not so in New York, always something special. What can I say? Now we need to take a cheap motel at the airport, leave at daybreak to finally get to our rental car in the heart of Manhattan

I better take another look at the rate we are paying, so I can’t be really mad at you, Mr. and Mrs. Alamo.

All the best from
THE AMERICAN BACKROOM

by Admin | September 26, 2009 | 0 Comments
Production and Travel

New companions: Navigon 4310 and GPS logger

Delivery service just rang! Making travel arrangements for our research trip sometimes feels like christmas, as we are getting little gift packages almost on a daily basis. This time it’s a Navigon 4310 max, so we are making sure not to lose our way in the USA. Thanks to the kind people at Navigon who provide this one for our trip. Usually the 4310 max comes with only European maps, but it seems as if they made an exception for us :)

Note the small label on the lower left corner… I bet this’ll help us find remote and secret access roads to Area 51! (Click to enlarge)

Speaking of GPS, navigation and geoinformation: To be able to tag the photos we are going to take, we just purchased an i-Blue 747 GPS Logger at everybody’s favorite online auction house. For a mere 45 dollars. The i-Blue 747 tracks itineraries and geoinformation that can be synchronized to Exif information of digital photos. I don’t know yet how (good) that’s gonna work out, but will keep you posted as soon as this little gadget gets dropped off… Like christmas, as I said.

by Esther | September 25, 2009 | 4 Comments
Travel and Equipment

Cross country vehicle relocation

German online magazin “spiegel/einestages” has a nice little story about encounters and adventures of one Peter Münder. Working as a driver for a vehicle relocation agency in the seventies, he drove a BMW cross-country from Brooklyn, NY to Tucson, AZ. Today the Auto Driveway Company offers services like that, and still foreigners are able to apply as drivers. You will save money on rental cars, but you also have to stick to a tight schedule to get the car to its destination.

by Alex | August 23, 2009 | 0 Comments
Links, Research and USA