After a week of traveling thousands of miles on the open road to California, getting back to the office seems so painfully ordinary. In just one week my friend Dave and I drove to California and back again, spending 3 nights in Indio, California at his parents' vacation house. With a long list of things to see, Dave and I explored Salt Lake City, had a night in Vegas, explored the middle of the desert and the hidden treasures of the Salton Sea, made the trek out to Newport Beach and the ocean, and took a ride up a mountain in Palm Springs - just to name a few of the highlights.
Like I said many times before, this trip was meaningful in that it wasn't meant to be just a vacation or an excuse to relax, it was also meant to create experiences. It was an escape from routine, from post-university transitioning and the everyday. Seeing the landscape change from prairie to mountains to canyons and desert was amazing. My previous Vegas and California trips were all linked in a matter of hours. With my cameras at my side, I shot as much as I felt was necessary. This latest project titled, Indio Outio, inspired by the location and the speed of our visit, is going to be a fun project to edit.
Below I've posted the short preview I cut together using two different audio tracks. My Vimeo account features the original video, and because of copyright issues, my YouTube account features the second version. For now, I'll leave the story here. There's a lot to say and a lot to show.
My road trip with my friend Dave begins first thing in the morning. We're driving thousands of kilometers to California as a week of escape and exploration. Think of it like the movie Sideways, but in the desert . . . or maybe the movie Made . . . or The Wizard? In any case, it's going to be exciting. I explained the significance of this trip a couple weeks ago in a post, logically titled, Two Weeks. To be clear, this isn't a vacation for the sake of relaxation, this is a trip for the sake of experiences. You can bet that I'll have my video camera in hand.
As one of the first edits I ever created for Editing Luke, my Buick Photo Collage (or Buick 360 as it's now called) was essentially just an experiment. I wanted to take pictures of my old 1989 Buick Park Avenue purely for memories sake. Getting older and showing her age, my car seemed like a worthy subject for a few photos while sitting all alone in the university parking lot.
This was June 2007 and I was staying in Regina over the summer for the first time, taking some electives in university. I shot several vantages of my car in combination with several sets of pictures I intended to animate. The goal was to create a short edit highlighting the scratches, dings, and old school styling that made my car the character I've always insisted it was (and still is for that matter). Following this project, it should come as no surprise that the first episode of Buick to the Future was shot just days later.
Buick 360 is short, snappy, and my answer to what was your first car like? Driving 'THE Buick' since I was 16, this car has seen and experienced a lot of things with me. Just in the time from making this short till now the car has gone from 240,000km to nearly 260,000km. It's crazy to think it's even been this long. Even as she's started to wear out a bit more each year, there's something comforting about knowing that this piece of machinery I grew up with is so well documented in a number of my short films from BTTF to Educated Detours to even a small cameo from the roof top in Day Dream Day.
There's been a lot of memories, and while this edit is only a showcase, to me it speaks of a car that's put on a lot of miles through some unforgettable adventures. This car has taken me through my youth and into adulthood, from getting my driver's license to driving away from university for the last time. With this video it was even instrumental in helping me kick of edits for this blog.
THE Buick has seen a lot of things and been a lot of places, and for that, I don't want to forget what it's been like to drive this car for so long and have it become a symbol - not for what it is, but for what I made it out to be. There's always been something about me and cars, and for a first car, this old Buick is my Lightning McQueen, Delorean, and Herbie all rolled up into one awesome piece of late 80's luxury. Classic.
