Demolition Saturday in Spokane

I guess it was the itch to shoot something fun that made me volunteer to work Saturday. In exchange I got a chance to cover the demolition of a duplex that had been cramping the style of a historic mansion in my neighborhood.

The video is below. Here’s a link to Shawn Vestal’s story on the event. Continue past the video for a couple observations on the assignment.

First, this was fun. But it was also a highly staged event with all sorts of fanfare. I look past that because the people attending the demolition — my neighbors — seemed genuinely pleased to see this eyesore go.

For me, it was a lot of waiting and then run and gun once the first brick smashed through a window. Colin Mulvany made sure to drill me on getting not only action but crowd reaction — turning the camera on the audience. I had to scramble to do so because the crowd was giving the demolition plenty of breathing room. I barely remember where all I went once the walls started falling, only that I was constantly turning my camera from destruction to the crowd and back again.

I edited my 50 minutes of footage down to the two-minute product in about four hours. That’s a quick turn for me. If this story hadn’t been so time-driven with a print component running the next morning, I would have taken more time to develop the narrative and remove some of the ambiguity. As Colin pointed out, the viewer is left wondering a bit why the property owner was dealing with this duplex in the first place. Why was it even built? I had the answers in my A roll, but in trying to keep it short this explanation wound up on the cutting room floor.

Overall, I think this is one of my better efforts.