Road Trippin'

December 28, 2007 12:03 PM

"Road Trip is a short film composed of 12,397 pictures taken automatically from the back seat of a car while driving accross [sic] America from Portland, Oregon to New Hampshire."
posted by dersins (34 comments total)

Similarly.
posted by dersins at 12:05 PM on December 28, 2007

So it's like 17 minutes long? I'm bad at math.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:07 PM on December 28, 2007

WHY do people put their bare feet up on the dash/out of the window? WHY?
posted by thehmsbeagle at 12:15 PM on December 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

I was pretty we'd all done something like it. I did it last summer on a trip from Bend, OR to Seattle.
posted by psmealey at 12:17 PM on December 28, 2007

Because it feels good.
posted by dersins at 12:17 PM on December 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

I remember my dad doing this on our own cross country trips. With an old Kodak Brownie camera. While driving.

Showing the trip off to the neighbors was never boring. The slide projector sounded like a machine gun.
posted by hal9k at 12:20 PM on December 28, 2007

like those interior rally cams, only for road tripping.
posted by camdan at 12:21 PM on December 28, 2007

yours is slow, psmealey.
posted by camdan at 12:26 PM on December 28, 2007

Man, they stopped in Madison and didn't come by to say hello. I'm hurt.
posted by schmedeman at 12:27 PM on December 28, 2007

All the boredom of long distance driving with the advantage that I can't have any side adventures while sitting in my cube!
posted by DU at 12:28 PM on December 28, 2007

Are we there yet?
posted by miss lynnster at 12:31 PM on December 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

I was rooting for a crash.
posted by mrnutty at 12:31 PM on December 28, 2007

while driving accross [sic] America from Portland, Oregon to New Hampshire."

And not once did I see them pass a joint.
posted by three blind mice at 12:32 PM on December 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Gruelling. It is a good thing to have for context, though. People who haven't been to the states have a hard time imagining the country's actual size...
posted by chuckdarwin at 12:33 PM on December 28, 2007

And not once did I see them pass a joint.

That happened off-camera.
posted by chuckdarwin at 12:34 PM on December 28, 2007

This made me need to pee.
posted by Pecinpah at 12:39 PM on December 28, 2007

Are we there yet?

so help me god if I hear that one more time I'm turning this car around and hauling your ass RIGHT BACK TO WISCONSIN
posted by Mikey-San at 12:40 PM on December 28, 2007

But... but... I've never been to Wisconsin.
posted by miss lynnster at 12:55 PM on December 28, 2007

And not once did I see them pass a joint.

No road head either.
posted by MillMan at 12:56 PM on December 28, 2007

Considering how boring the actual ride would be, this is cooler to watch than I thought it would be.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 1:08 PM on December 28, 2007

I liked it the first time when it was called Koyaanisqatsi.
posted by ed at 1:08 PM on December 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Are we there yet?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:11 PM on December 28, 2007

He's hitting me!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:13 PM on December 28, 2007

He's hitting me!

Well maybe if you'd stay on your side of the car! Stay out of my space!
posted by inigo2 at 1:37 PM on December 28, 2007

Cross country road trips are not boring. They are awesome. I did it last summer (2006) when moving from VA to NV. Kansas is awesome, as is being able to see the curvature of the earth on the horizon. You never realize just how weird that is until you've been awake for 30 hours and you realize it's not a hallucination. I have pictures to prove it.
posted by daq at 1:43 PM on December 28, 2007

yours is slow, psmealey.

There was a lot of traffic that day, as I recall.
posted by psmealey at 2:30 PM on December 28, 2007

From Olympia, Washington to Seattle in two minutes, circa 1988, brought to you by one of the dudes from Seattle tweesters Incredible Force of Junior. And there's another neat Super-8 one on there from 1982. Previously, Michel Gondry does this.
posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal at 4:04 PM on December 28, 2007

posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal

I can't decide if that's the best user name I've ever seen, or the worst. I'm going to go with best... for now... Pressure's on, Bridge... or Kai, or whatever you go by in the shortened form. /OT
posted by psmealey at 4:25 PM on December 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

WHY do people put their bare feet up on the dash/out of the window? WHY?

Clearly they've never seen Death Proof.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:15 PM on December 28, 2007

My favorite part of the movie was that scene when they were in the car.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 10:18 PM on December 28, 2007

WHY do people put their bare feet up on the dash/out of the window? WHY?

I f-ing hate when people do that when I'm driving. Even better on hot days so when they put their feet down, there is a brief moment you can see a sweat outline of feet on your dashboard slowly evaporate. FEET I SAY! AH GOD have you seen the studies on how long fungus and bacteria can survive on plastic, you bastard.

ps. your feet stink and rolling the window down only blows it towards me. Stinging my eyes and impeding my ability to control the vehicle in a safe manner, swampfoot.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 10:23 PM on December 28, 2007

Driving cross country was definitely one of the best times of my life. A friend and i started in DC and drove through West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, dropped down to Arizona, back up to Nevada, back down to the southern most part of California and up the entire west coast through Oregon and onto Washington and up the Olympic Peninsula, down through Idaho, Montana, and it ended in Wyoming when we got into a car accident and totaled the car. We were on the road for almost a month so we had plenty of time to stop off and see many things. I favorite parts the openness of Kansas, the deserts of Arizona, the redwoods in California, and the skies in Montana.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 11:50 PM on December 28, 2007

I think the film would be a lot better if it had some traffic signs, or state border indicators or something, to give the viewer a point of reference. Also, the ability to pause on an individual frame would've been great as well. Otherwise, sort of interesting.
posted by spacely_sprocket at 9:40 AM on December 29, 2007

Wake me when the "watch me age four years in two minutes" and "watch me drive across the country in fifteen minutes" trend is over.
posted by jayder at 5:37 PM on December 29, 2007 [1 favorite]