http://vimeo.com/80795157
I’m a bit of a fan of the Cambridge Science Centre, and of the people behind it. A year ago I trekked down from Newcastle to help them fix things up just before they opened. So by ‘fan’ I mean ‘groupie.’
Hence, my favourite parts of this film are Chris Lennard saying ‘Heath-Robinson‘ rather than ‘Rube Goldberg‘ (quite right too), and the brief glimpse at the end of the inimitable Dave Ansell leaning in to blow out a candle. Lovely people all.
My biggest problem with Heath Robinson machines is that they’re impossible to photograph unless they’re designed specifically for the camera. And the only people to have done that, really, are the folks behind the magnificent Japanese children’s series Pitagora Suichi, whose mechanisms are unbelievably smart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSf-3gwHPZA
(check this playlist for a bunch more from the same source.)
Yeeeees, we didn’t quite take into account how much the candles would burn down in the 20-30mins the chain took to run…. blowing the candles out was very much in the spirit of the rest of the chain… was great fun though.
OK GO’s video for ‘This Too Shall Pass’ is an excellent attempt and apparently done in one long shot (according to the making of the video on youtube)!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w
Good tune as well!