CNN/AP: A dream of a 1,000-year camera

[jenmdixon]

neat idea...

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http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/29/film.raimi.centurycam.ap/index.html

A dream of a 1,000-year camera

Sam Raimi wants to document a millennium

Tuesday, June 29, 2004 Posted: 2:18 PM EDT (1818 GMT)

CULVER CITY, California (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 the "Century Cam," a network of cameras that would document the United States' urban landscape for a millennium.

The proposal: Position 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 told The Associated Press in an interview to promote "Spider-Man 2." "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.

[Mr. S]

I think that is one awesome concept, I mean, totally awesome. Just theres a problem of making sure the surveillance will remain stationary and that there will always be a camera. If something major happens to a part of the country, then we essentially lose that spot or something.