Queen Mary Slips In

Rather than watch the Superbowl last Sunday, we spent the day at the Golden Gate Bridge time-laps'ing Queen Mary 2's San Francisco arrival. It was my most ambitious time-lapse setup to date, with a crew of three running six cameras. The one minute film is on YouTube...



and also on BrightCove (much better quality)...



We expected a big crowd so we arrived at the bridge at 11AM to get parking spots and good camera locations. By the 3PM expected arrival there were thousands of spectators waiting and we had to vigorously defend our space to keep people from disturbing our camera setups.

I ran the cameras to the west of the bridge, Cynthia ran the ones from the Marin observation overlook, and Kristin was on the bridge.



Bill Owens joined me and shot his own footage of the crowd and the scene. Rosie helped Cynthia with crowd control and Kristin enlisted the aid of a SF couple in defending her bridge perch. We met a bunch of people and have some good stories about all this. Kristin found herself as the arbitrator of another couple's serious disagreement over where they should relieve their bladders.

Our gear included the six cameras, three laptop computers, various tripods and a couple of battery systems with AC inverters. Not shown in the photo was the other support gear - food, drink and chairs.