Show us your Stroad! Crowdsourcing the Stroads of America
Friends of Strong Towns, we have a request for you. We are gathering footage of the many stroads outside our front doors.
As a refresher,
Urban Dictionary definition of Stroad
For example, here is a trip down a massively stroad-y stroad.
I’m helping Stong Towns with a bit of an art project. We’re making a video (that you all can watch when finished) that will include a rapid-fire survey of the stroads of America. We can't gather all that footage on our own, so we are hoping to crowdsource from the Strong Towns community.
Here are the details:
Who: Anyone with a smartphone that can take full HD (1080p) video footage of their local stroad. If you bought your smartphone within the last two-three years, chances are you can shoot HD video with the camera on board.
What: A 3-10 second clip of your favourite local stroad. No more than 10 seconds please!
Where: Stand roughly in the middle of your stroad (in a crosswalk or median is absolutely fine) when you can safely do so.
When: Anytime before August 8th
Why: Because you are so nice. And you can also see your stroad in an action-packed Strong Towns video and your name in the credits. No guarantees that every clip will work in the final cut, but following the instructions below will help make it compatible.
How:
- Identify a good time and place to safely linger near the middle of a stroad for up to 10 seconds. Bring a buddy if necessary so they can keep a lookout for cars.
- From your position in the middle of the stroad, stand facing the traffic (ie. do not shoot sideways toward the buildings lining the road).
- Turn your smartphone 90º so it is recording in landscape mode, not portrait.
- Record a maximum of 10 seconds of footage of the stroad.
- Safely evacuate the stroad :)
- Email your <10 sec clip to curbsidechat@gmail.com. The subject line of your email should read “Stroad clip, [your town or city].” In the body of the email, please specify who we should attribute the footage to in the credits.
That’s all for now! I'm going to try and get an example video up for you shortly. Thanks in advance and looking forward to seeing your stroads!
Gracen
And just for good times...