I bought the CD single of this song that I heard heard about from a few friends. The song blew me away, and I called the producer and pitched him a music video idea. He loved it. I flew out to Flint, Michigan with nothing more than my video camera, follow focus, and a reflector. I showed up at 8am on a Saturday and we shot a 5 minute music video in about 10 hours. We filmed in 5 locations and had a cast of over 10 people!

We had no lights, no tripod, and none of the "actors" had any professional experience. It was a scorching 100+ degrees outside and staying hydrated and cool proved challenging. However, as you see, these folks were very talented and pulled off a nearly impossible task. The video turned out fantastic and it's being entered into a few music video film festivals.

It was truly a community effort and I applaud the hard working dedicated people of my hometown of Flint on making something I think tells a sad story but leaves you with a sense of hope.

Enjoy.

The corner of 23rd Street and 6th Avenue was renowned for its gusty breezes that might allow a man to catch a glimpse of a woman's stockings. In this staged scene we see Alfred Abadie, an Edison cameraman, and Florence Georgie strolling along when Georgie has a Marilyn Monroe type moment.

This film was restored by the Library of Congress and was copied at 16fps from 35mm.

This movie is part of the collection: Short Format Films

Director: Edwin S. Porter
Production Company: Edwin S. Porter
Sponsor: Edison Mfg. Co.
Audio/Visual: silent, black & white
Keywords: Edison; silent

Guides & Manuals

Well, you can't, really, but you can fake it real good. Youtube works great, but I really like Vimeo which sadly is Flash-based and does not work on the iPhone. But you can instruct your WordPress blog post to swap out the Vimeo video for an MP4 version of the video that does work on the iPhone.

Here's how you do it:

1. Encode your video and output an MP4 iPhone compatible video. Upload it to where you host your files. I use Quicktime Pro and the default settings.

2. Download the EXEC-PHP WordPress plugin. This will let your posts interpret PHP code without any hassle.

3. Add a new post. Click the HTML tab, and paste this code in, changing the values accordingly.

<?php
if(strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPhone') || strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPod')) {
print <<<END
<embed src="http://pathtovideo.m4v" width="XXX" height="XXX" href="http://pathtovideo.m4v">
END;
}
else {
print <<<END
*****VIDEO EMBED CODE*****
END;
}
?>