Sam Raimi in Craziness Shocker

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Director Sam Raimi dreams of 1,000-year camera to witness urban history
By David Germain
CULVER CITY, Calif. (AP) — Sam Raimi hopes to remain in film a long time after he’s through making Spider-Man movies. For about 1,000 years.
Raimi wants to build a “Century Cam,” a network of cameras that would document the United States’ urban landscape for a millennium.
His proposal would put cameras above all major American cities and shoot one frame — a 24th of a second of film — each day at noon. The frames would be strung together gradually to create a continuous chronicle of each city’s development.
“It’s the same idea of all time-lapse photography, but over an outrageous amount of time,” Raimi said. “So you could watch the city of Los Angeles rise, and maybe an earthquake might come in 300 years or a tidal wave.”
Along with natural disasters, the cameras would capture human rebuilding and demolition. Viewers could watch decades of change in minutes, much like the hero in George Pal’s The Time Machine, who saw landscapes radically altered as he shot forward in time.
At a frame a day, a year’s worth of shots over a particular city would add up to 15 seconds of film, a decade would blow by in two and a half minutes and a century would run 25 minutes. A full 1,000 years of film would last just over four hours.

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:16 (twenty-two years ago)

cool, i can't wait to see this!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:17 (twenty-two years ago)

opening episode of Futurama to thread.

― Kingfish of Burma (Kingfish), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Soundtrack by John Cage.

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:18 (twenty-two years ago)

4 hours! I can't sit through 4 hours.

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:19 (twenty-two years ago)

(in all fairness, it's not that crazy, Sam Raimi. More like kooky...and wonderful.)

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Good idea. He should get in touch with people at http://www.longnow.org/
"The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996** to develop Clock and "Library" projects as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. It has been nearly 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age and the beginnings of civilization. Progress lately is often measured on a "faster/cheaper" scale. The Long Now Foundation seeks to promote "slower/better" thinking and to foster creativity in the framework of the next 10,000 years."

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I'll wait for the DVD, frankly.

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I just hope he can find a role for Bruce Campbell.

― Huk-El (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Hah, the joke will be on him, because at the end of 1000 years there'll be a new format. Maybe they'll have Blue-Ray out by then.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:26 (twenty-two years ago)

MEGABETAMAX

― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 14:32 (twenty-two years ago)

4 hours! I can't sit through 4 hours.

He'll just split it into two volumes.

― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 21:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Kill Sam vols 1 & 2.

― I am not a mandible (Barima), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 21:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Can't they just do this with CGI these days?

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 21:34 (twenty-two years ago)

CGI DOESN'T LAST 1,000 YEARS LIKE FILM DO

― deanomgwtf!!!p%3Fmsgid%3D4581997 (deangulberry), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 21:36 (twenty-two years ago)

(But when the earthquake hits, won't the camera fall down?)

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 22:11 (twenty-two years ago)

That's what I was thinking!

― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 22:15 (twenty-two years ago)

T/S: ORGANIC WEB CAMERAS VS. NON-ORGANIC WEB CAMERAS

― deanomgwtf!!!p%3Fmsgid%3D4581997 (deangulberry), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 22:16 (twenty-two years ago)

I think this idea is completely rad, and that Ryoji Ikeda should write the score

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 22:18 (twenty-two years ago)

like anyone will know what a "spiderman" is in 1000 years

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 22:21 (twenty-two years ago)

It kind of makes me nauseous to think that he had this stupid thought and that the AP decided it was worth printing.

― deanomgwtf!!!p%3Fmsgid%3D4581997 (deangulberry), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 22:24 (twenty-two years ago)

like there will even be INTERNET in 1000 years

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 22:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually, John, Jem Finer (ex-Pogues) has composed and set into motion the performance of a thousand-year-long piece of music, so just show up with a Dictaphone and flick the microphone on every four years or so, and there's your soundtrack.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 08:29 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, I'm wrong, Cage would only cover 2/3rds of the time required (btw I love this picture)...

Wednesday, 5 February, 2003, 13:00 GMT
First notes for 639-year composition

The piece by John Cage is called As Slow As Possible

The first notes in the longest and slowest piece of music in history, designed to go on for 639 years, are being played on a German church organ on Wednesday.

The three notes, which will last for a year-and-a-half, are just the start of the piece, called As Slow As Possible.

Composed by late avant-garde composer John Cage, who died in 1992, the performance has already been going for 17 months - although all that has been heard so far is the sound of the organ's bellows being inflated.

The music will be played in Halberstadt, a small town renowned for its ancient organs in central Germany.

It was originally a 20-minute piece for piano, but a group of musicians and philosophers decided to take the title literally and work out how long the longest possible piece of music could last.

They settled on 639 years because the Halberstadt organ was 639 years old in the year 2000.

"We started discussing - what is as slow as possible for the organ?" Swedish composer and organist Hans-Ola Ericsson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"We, a group of theologians, musicologists, philosophers, composers and organists, met during a couple of years solely to discuss this question. It was rather wonderful to have one topic to discuss at length."

"We came up with the answer that the piece could last for the duration of the organ - that is the lifetime of an organ."

Mr Ericsson said John Cage would have liked what they had done with it.

"It's a sound that we give to the future to take care of, and hopefully the aesthetics and the ideas of John Cage will manage to survive."

The first note is due to be struck at 1800 local time (1700 GMT) on Wednesday.

The performance follows a legal case in which composer Mike Batt was forced to pay a six-figure sum to Cage's publishers, who accused him of plagiarising a silent piece of music.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 12:58 (twenty-one years ago)

composer Mike Batt was forced to pay a six-figure sum to Cage's publishers, who accused him of plagiarising a silent piece of music.

― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 19:41 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, that was covered in another thread. You want this one locked?

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 19:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Me? I just logged on, I don't want any trouble.

― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 19:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Jesus, stencil, calm the fuck down.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 19:53 (twenty-one years ago)

YOU CALM DOWN MEEDER!

(wtf does anybody remember laughter?)

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 20:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Germany just got elimanated, so the whole world can go to hell.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 20:06 (twenty-one years ago)

sorry dude, don't let it get you down. Go to Halberstadt and let the organ tones flow over you and wash away your sorrow.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 20:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Dude, the 'time speeding forward' bit of The Time Machine was the best part.

― Mike Stuchbery, Thursday, 24 June 2004 02:43 (twenty-one years ago)

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