Bird's-Eye View of San Francisco, Cal., from a Balloon (1902)
Taken while ascending some 2,000 yards into the clouds, and represents a most diversified view of the city of San Francisco, the Golden Gate, Pacific Ocean, and surrounding country for miles. The huge balloon from which this picture was taken is 75 feet in diameter, 250 feet in circumference and about 105 feet high, and it requires some 150,000 feet of gas to raise it from the ground.
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Very Cool!!!
Memorable, crazy movie
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Bird's-Eye View of San Francisco, Cal., from a Balloon (1902) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A fairly interesting short from Edison shows San Francisco before the great quake, which would happen a few years later. The "gimmick" of this film is that it was shot from a hot air balloon and I'm sure this thing made people line up to see. Considering when it was shot the movie remains fairly interesting but you can't help but wish the cinematography was a little better. Some of the shots, due to the lighting, are extremely dark and this isn't helped by the rather poor shape of the print I saw. There are some interesting things to see here including various houses and building but the quality needed to be a little better.
By the time this was shot, the public was losing interest in simple vistas. This picture is also rendered almost unviewable by the poor, irregular lighting it was shot in. If you look at this hoping to see what the San Francisco landscape looked like before the Great Quake, this won't help you.