Monday, October 17, 2005

Why We All Should Thank an Engineer

A gentle reader sends along a link to a most amazing Rube Goldberg contraption devised by Honda. It has been forwarded to us with the following message (disclaimer: don't believe everything you see on the internet):
There are NO computer graphics or digital tricks in the film you are about to see. Everything you see really happened in real time, exactly as you see it. The film required 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn't work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. By the time it was over, they were ready to change professions. The film cost 6 million dollars and took three months to complete, including a full engineering of the sequence. In addition, it's two minutes long so every time Honda airs the film on British television, they're shelling out enough dough to keep any one of us in clover for a lifetime. However, it is fast becoming the most downloaded advertisement in Internet history.

For non-technical, impatient types like SWNID, this simply prompts me to say thank you to all engineers, who make life easier for everyone.

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