A Night at the Carnival

I grew up in a mid-sized city in North Dakota. We had a nice zoo, several parks and a mall. That was about it. Back then coffee houses weren't even a thing. There was nothing interesting to do in our downtime except for about ten days in the summer the State Fair would roll into town. The fairgrounds were pretty desolate most of the year, but when the carnival set itself up and the midway filled with food carts everything became colorful and had so much character. Every year as teenagers we would say we weren't going to bother going. Every year we went anyway. 

Now that I am an adult the rides and games and food and colors are much less appealing. But I love the lights and creaky old structures. On the walk to and from my office I can see them setting up just below the Morrison Bridge. This year I finally dragged my camera out to the water front when the Rose Festival was in town. The Big Wheel was positioned right next to the walkway on the bridge and it was too perfect not to take advantage of. There are actually two nights worth of footage here. I intended to do more but the thing with time-lapse is that it takes a while. Five seconds of footage might be a half hour of time, and the summer sun means that there is only a few hours after dark before they close the carnival. 

I shot this video all in camera on the Sony FS100. There is an under crank option you can use to take one frame a second. I also used a slow shutter speed to emphasize the light trails and reduce the grain. When it came time to edit I kept pulling stock sound and music from the bin and just layered noises on top of each other until I got something that matched the mood of the piece. Enjoy!