Go Pro Grain Farming

September 30, 2012 2:50 PM

Go Pro Grain Farming Good, watchable videos of grain farming are hard to find, but using a Go Pro camera to document 2012 crop production on the Canadian prairies was a great idea.
posted by bluebelle (18 comments total)

Some pretty gripping images there. Thanks for sharing.
posted by louie at 3:13 PM on September 30, 2012

I really, REALLY need to study visual storytelling. This is an awesome telling of a story, thanks for sharing!
posted by MikeWarot at 3:13 PM on September 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think "Go Pro" is becoming the "Photoshop" of POV video making.
posted by bz at 3:34 PM on September 30, 2012 [5 favorites]

Mod note: Folks, if this needs to go to MetaTalk, so be it, but otherwise just flag and move on.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:42 PM on September 30, 2012

Fisheye makes everything better.
posted by wierdo at 4:07 PM on September 30, 2012

I guess the reason I got excited about this video is because it's awfully difficult to make cool videos of field operations safely. Standing beside the combine as it drives past, harvesting, is kind of dangerous, if you're just standing there with your camera. I'm sure you don't need a Go Pro specifically to do this though!
posted by bluebelle at 4:22 PM on September 30, 2012

"Go Pro Grain Farming" sounds like a really off-market PS2 game....
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:22 PM on September 30, 2012 [5 favorites]

I recently re-watched Dovzhenko's Earth. Am I wrong to see similarities here?
posted by scratch at 4:31 PM on September 30, 2012

I want to go to there.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:55 PM on September 30, 2012

From the beginning: IAMA-Tumbleweed; AMA.

(that indeed would be dangerous footage to get a bare 10 years ago). Much love for the prairies. I hope we can collectively manage to mitigate the ongoing (increasing) desertification and the risks that sort of situation can (as it has) bring.
posted by infinite intimation at 4:57 PM on September 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

If the soundtrack was switched with some deep cuts from In Utero, Fixed, and Broken this would be a 100% spot on depiction of my formative years.

They even put the camera on an oil well! I always wanted to do that!
posted by sleslie at 4:59 PM on September 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

A fisheye lens really captures Alberta skies well. It's hard to do them justice with your average point-and-shoot camera. I enjoyed this a lot.

Youtube's automated music identification sure missed the mark this time. Does that happen often? I thought it was pretty foolproof.
posted by figurant at 5:12 PM on September 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

I liked this, especially when the generations were identified by first name only, and you had to figure who was father/son. My only quibble is where are the women. Any real farmer will acknowledge that it doesn't get done without the whole family pitching in.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:27 PM on September 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

I want to be these people. It's weird to emphatic I know how to write software but not grow grain.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 8:23 PM on September 30, 2012

And here we have simulated grain farming!
posted by AaronRaphael at 8:27 PM on September 30, 2012

I just got home from doing this. In this location. The video doesn't quite catch the itch from barley dust.
posted by Trochanter at 9:01 PM on September 30, 2012 [5 favorites]

But barley dust is still not as bad as oat dust, Trochanter, eh?
And the breakdowns and subsequent repairs have been heavily airbrushed in this video, I would presume.
posted by bluebelle at 9:51 PM on September 30, 2012

This was awesome. As a kid i have vague memories of farming from the Texas panhandle. Thank you bluebelle for an awesome post that puts me in awe of a wholly different life that could have been mine...and I think i would have been ok with that also.
posted by bartonlong at 10:22 AM on October 1, 2012