— DAY 4 —
BUFFALO, NEW YORK
DAY 4, in which our traveler discovers a pool of endless opportunities that await him, and chooses his direction.
Today we had the long 7 hr drive ahead of us through Vermont and all of upstate New York to Buffalo.
The monument in Bennington was an interesting treat– neither of us expected it to be as large as it was.
After twisting through some small Vermont and New York towns, we emptied onto 90 West to a shocking message from our GPS...
"Continue oN 90 West for over 200 miles."
We expect to hear higher numbers as this trip progresses...
Along the long drive we talked about OUR THOUGHTS ABOUT MOVING WEST, and what could unfold for our little adventurer after he boarded his train to A new frontier.
The drive went pretty fast. Mike sketched as we storyboarded tonight's episode, and worked on some animations along the way.
Then, Mike found the rapid fire setting on our camera, and we proceeded to laugh heartedly as we imagined a gatling gun with a photography feature.
We caught a freak downpour around Rochester, then the skies completely cleared and we were smooth sailing to Buffalo.
Mike and I were both completely taken aback by the sheer scale and presence of Buffalo's Silo City.
We expected this to be a simple episode: large scale, industrial, our character entering a giant, new unfamiliar land...
WE WERE WRONG IN THE MOST FANTASTIC WAY.
First off, The scale of these BEHEMOTHS is hard to comprehend.
They're roughly 190 feet tall.
Our thoughts going into this evening, after a long drive, was we'd pull back the tricks and do something simple. Big projection on the outside of a silo, Little Buddy gets off a train and sees a big city. Boom. Easy.
The tricky part, was after an amazing tour from our friend Adam, we saw all sorts of interesting projection opportunities, and were suddenly back to the storyboard. We had no idea we'd be able to walk inside of these things.
The best way to hear our process for DAY 4 is through a great conversation we had with some onlookers, then Mike and I ideate further and decide on an amazing location, inside silo #42.
We also share a struggle felt up to this point about the limited format of our backer-only updates, sharing snippets publicly along the way, and more.
Earlier today we were given a tour by our friend Adam.
Silo City is so vast, and profoundly vacant.
He showed us the site-specific art installations peppered throughout the various buildings, and explained how they recently put on big events that bring in a ton of people to these incredible structures of concrete + steel.
The echos that bellow through each silo chamber are difficult to capture or even explain. By the end of the night, 3:30am, the silence made us awestruck to be in the space that we were, at this moment on our journey, feeling calm + thankful + fortunate to be able to bring this project to life.
Everyone we met tonight felt super excited for their city and the positive growth it has seen in the past couple years.
We'll definitely be back to this place.
After another night wrapping at 4am, we've been continually re-evaluating our process to ensure we don't fall behind, but don't sacrifice the quality we want to deliver, either.
Next up, our longest drive yet, to Chicago, Illinois.
Huge thanks to Jim Watkins at Silo City for being an incredible host for DAY 4.
Special thanks to Adam Sauerwein for guiding to & through this wild location.