Thursday, August 22, 2013

Aerial footage of St. Lawrence-Thousand Island reaches the web

HAMMOND – While the final cut has not yet been released, residents can catch a preview of a video that will be used to promote the St. Lawrence-Thousand Island region on the Internet.
A 3 1/2 minute teaser video on the video sharing website YouTube features candid portraits into summer life on the St. Lawrence River.
But the video is not without its criticisms.  Continue reading....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but who is the beholder in the production of the video? Was there a local group from the river who decided what to include and what not, or was the inclusion of views done at the complete discretion of the production firm? If someone decided to include views of turbines on Wolfe Island, was it because they were considered beautiful or was it to avoid the political ramifications on the wind issue? If the entire section of the river that runs through New York were included then I'd be asking if they included shots of the industrial development on the Canadian side of the river near Cornwall.

No doubt that including turbines in the promotional video was a conscious decision, but I don't think it was driven by aesthetics.

Anonymous said...

Yup!

Anonymous said...

It is just as I feared. I hope it is not too late to fix it. I hope there is not some misguided soul out there who was involved with the production of this video who is trying to make the point that a wind project can be appropriate in even the most scenic of settings. That is what the wind lobby does. They arrange to have pictures of wind farms placed gratuitously in the background in commercials for products totally unrelated to wind power. The insidious purpose is create the impression in the viewer that a large scale wind project is a visually benign presence. It isn’t.

Even these brief views of the wind turbines should not have been included in the video.

Someone not fully familiar with the Thousand Islands or having any first-hand familiarity with a wind project, could come to the very erroneous conclusion that these glimpses of the Wolfe Island wind project are included in the video as a fascinating and interesting aspect of the Thousand Islands Region.

In fact, the Wolfe Island wind project is a very unfortunate blight upon the region. It should not be part of showcasing the beauty of the Region for even a few seconds. The people principally involved in building the Wolfe Island wind project were little concerned with protecting the beauty of the Region. That is plainly obvious.

To include even a glimpse of the wind project in this video helps to perpetuate the notion that a "windfarm" is a fascinating and impressive thing to look at. For a few minutes, I will readily admit that a large wind project is a fascinating thing to look at. But people don't live in or visit the Thousand Islands Region for a few minutes in a helicopter flyover.

The incredibly ugly and misplaced wind turbines on Wolfe Island will be there for 20 years – no more hopefully. They are outrageously out of place given the aesthetic qualities of the River and the islands. They are noisy. They produce shadow flicker. They kill birds and bats. They are an unreliable source of energy and they accomplish nothing in terms of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide. They are a tragic joke.

Just the sight of the wind turbines in a video designed to showcase the beauty of the Thousand Islands renders this video useless and counterproductive. Hopefully some smart editing decisions can still be done. The wind turbines on Wolfe Island are there, but that does not mean they have to be highlighted.

Anonymous said...

7:30 Unfortunately, there are many pseudo, neo-environmentalists who believe industrial wind power is an answer to the global warming issue,therefore any visual blight they may present is a tolerable negative impact. A necessary drawback that will eventually be assimilated into our perception of what is scenic. we can adjust and accept it as essential, so they say.

I concur with you, it is abominable, and we should use every resource to avoid this degradation of the 1000 Islands.