Professional videographer Harry Arnold of Detroit Drone sent remote-control quad copters to fly with cameras over and around the Brewster-Douglass housing projects near downtown Detroit from March through August as demolition cranes chewed up the last buildings like Kit-Kat bars.
With split screens and time-lapse compression, the local drone photography pioneer created a six and a half-minute view of brick towers gnawed piece-by-piece to level ground.
Hour by hour and day by day, that work can appear tedious and mundane. Sped up and well-edited, it's oddly mesmerizing -- a gritty urban death dance of a machine with a bird-like beak reducing buildings to dust. Arnold titles it "Brewster Douglass Requiem."
The video was commissioned by the demolition contractor, Homrich, Inc., which is based in Monroe County and has a Detroit office.
-- Alan Stamm