Demolition Video: CSU East Bay Warren Hall Building Implosion

Built in 1971, the 13-story Warren Hall Building on the CSU East Bay campus was right on top of the Hayward Fault. Due to seismic safety concerns, Warren Hall was imploded yesterday at 9 a.m. using 1,100 charges.

I got stuck in traffic and was running late getting to the demolition. Realizing there was no way I'd make it to the recommended viewing spot at the Kmart parking lot in time, I pulled into a strip mall and parked in front of a donut shop and cash for gold store. With only minutes to spare, I put my Sony RX100 on a Nodal Ninja carbon fiber pole, pressed record, and stood on the corner with a crowd of onlookers.

Technical Details: I shot the video at 60p on the RX100, which becomes 30p in an editing program. The 60p setting is best for slow motion, and the shutter should be set to 1/60. For regular footage, the 60i setting has a lot more data. This is somewhat unintuitive because 60p is 28mbps and 60i is 24mbps. Run Gun Shoot has a great post about the RX100 video settings.

For a quick lo-fi edit, I took the MTS (AVCHD) video file and created a 720p mp4 using HandBrake. I dropped the mp4 into iMovie, and sped up the beginning and end of the footage 4x's. The demolition itself was slowed down to half speed. I mixed in some music by Gong, and kept the native audio at 50% volume.

Voilà - 53 seconds of gongs, screeching, and a building falling down in slow motion.