June 12, 2008

'EARTH HOUR' VIDEO RECOGNIZED AT MTV AWARDS

Strauss cut the 2.5-minute video (www.nsw.gov.au) using Thomson Grass Valley's Edius software running on a PC. The project encourages the reduced use of electricity and asked that businesses and individuals switch off their lights and other unnecessary electrical devices from 7.30pm to 8.30pm on March 29th. And while the initiative was adopted in Sydney, numerous other cities also participated, including those in New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, Thailand, Denmark, Fiji, the Philippines, Ireland and Israel.

To create the video, Strauss set up his camera for several hours and created a timelapse sequence as the city of Sydney went dark. To create the timelapse sequence in Edius - just before the lights of the city were turned off - Strauss took two hours of skyline footage and boats quickly traveling in the harbor and sped up the footage 25x, then went back to normal speed to show the dark city.