Pumpjacks! Round Mountain Road, Tupman Road, Highway 33, 7th Standard Road. California, October / November 2009.
One of my all-time fave videos. The original Machine Age video, and still by far the most popular of my videos (more than 300,000 views on Youtube). Done with a cheap old 1440i Sony DV prosumer tape unit (and a bit of trespassing — run-and-gun’s difficult when you’re using a huge heavy tripod and you’re parked on the non-existent shoulders of roads that have heavy trucks thundering down them) back in the Paleolithic era in the greater Bakersfield (California) area, it’s definitely one of my fave videos… and it’s definitely also showing its age (2009!). People sometimes complain that the soundtrack I cobbled together isn’t sync’d or that it’s monotonous, but hey, that’s kind of the point, right?
I’d love to redo both this and Drive-By: Oilfield again with better gear now, but they’re much more savvy about oilfield security nowadays, and I’d never be allowed.