May 2011: A week in the Mojave Desert: Barstow, Bishop, Daggett, Trona, Bristol Lake, Ludlow, Tehachapi, Amboy, Keeler… the usual suspects.
My first real attempt to make a video about human settlement and the Mojave, and also to capture some of the feeling of driving through the desert — the desert as it really is (and as I’ve known it in passing for decades now), not the pristine desert of the imagination or tourist brochures. Much of it was done using the same really primitive 720p 30fps DSLR hanging off one of my Subaru’s side windows and driving very slowly that I used for Drive-By: Oilfield. It’s backed by Mahler’s Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde (from his Das Lied Von Der Erde); I get criticized a lot for that soundtrack, but I always knew from long before I shot the video itself that I’d be using it — what could be more appropriate for backing the visuals of the dry wind-blown mixture of junk and ruins and natural beauty than a florid stretch of Western Art Music? And besides, it’s exactly the length I wanted.
I’m really tempted to do an updated scenic 5K version in the next year or two…