Freight Shred

Caution Stobe Warning: there are parts of this video that may be troublesome for folks that are sensitive to strobing.

UPDATE: May 23rd, 2012

New and final release of "Freight Train" posted today.

“Freight Shred” was made to participate in the Vimeo Weekend Project Group’s Stredit due on May 1st, 2012. This was done in one night so it was a really rough edit. After the project deadline passed I went back and re-cut the images to eliminate some camera shakes caused by the rail movement, and added a whole new sound design including ambient sounds and music. Even with all these changes it still meets the original Weekend Project criteria:

Vimeo staff person, Andrea Allen invents and defines the "Stredit" as follows:

"1. Use every clip you took during a specific event.

2. Keep your clips in chronological order.

3. Trim your clips to showcase the very best parts. Because you might have a lot of footage, it's helpful to set a time limit for yourself. Three minutes, or about the length of a song, is always a good choice."

I love trains and generally will pull out of traffic grab a tripod and my pocket camera and start shooting. This time I got 5 shots off, 2 waist level (1/2 x in camera slow motion) and 3 very low angle shots in real time that caught the belly of the empty cars thanks to the versatility of the Joby Gorillapod.

I did the 'stredit' but with a little twist. I wanted to cover all 5 shots in 1 minute. To meet my goaI, I needed to overlap shots. I cut it so the first shot is laid down as a background shot with the 2nd shot shredded and overlaid (by compositing, cropping, and track motion). Then continuing with the 2nd shot as the background and the 3rd shot is shredded on top of it, and so on until the last shot which has itself as the background and the shred.

Thanks for watching.

-Phil

Camera: Nikon Coolpix S9100 pocket camera

Video editing suite: Vegas Pro 10

Camera, sound, original music, and editing by Phil Loarie