It was 16 years ago this weekend that I lugged my Auricon Pro 600 movie camera and a Honda generator over to the back court yard area of Harbor View hospital. everything worked out great, once I started filming I couldn’t stop until the camera ran out of film so anything could have happened during the timeI was shooting to mess up the film like, bumping camera, or a delay in the demolition but everything worked out great. The camera I was using was a Auricon Pro 600 which are pretty much what they would call a news reel camera. It had recently been completely serviced but not tested. I thought that this would be the perfect way of testing it. The camera works fine and I have a film.
This is a film that I had planed on making for more than two years before I began to shoot it. The Idea was to shoot an entire 400 ft. magazine of film from start to finish without stopping. When news came that they were going to destroy the King County Domed Stadium I thought that this would be a perfect subject for this film. I got up at 3:45 am on that faithful morning and loaded up my beloved Auricon Pro 600 movie camera and made my way to the location that I had seeked out weeks prior. I set up my camera and framed up my shot and began shooting exactly 5 minutes before the Stadium was due to be imploded. My Idea was to document the last moments before destruction, the moments during destruction and the moments after destruction, a full 400ft of film shot in one take from one angle with out stopping. The film was shot in black and white and printed on color stock with a royal blue tint. I had always wanted to make a film this way and pay homage to one of my early film influences the late great Andy Warhol.
2000, 16mm, b/w/tint, silent, 10min
prints of this film are available from canyon Cinema
THE LAST TEN MINUTES OF EXISTENCE (2000) from Jon Behrens on Vimeo.
