Boxed Into a Corner?

This past spring, Paradigm Mechanical replaced an aging cooling tower above Suburban Station, one of the busiest stations in the SEPTA rail system. The tower’s location—a tightly enclosed space atop the Two Penn Center building—presented a challenge for everyone involved. For the builders, limitations on building and traffic closures at arguably the most hectic intersection in Philadelphia meant that they had a mere 48 hours to complete a process that normally takes several weeks.

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    Only a short section of JFK Boulevard was closed to traffic.

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    The new cooling tower needed to be lowered into the site by crane, at a height so tall that I had to cross Love Park (through still-active traffic) to properly capture it.

As for me, I’ve filmed in smaller spaces before, but this time I couldn’t rely on neighboring walls or rooftops to host extra cameras. I managed to anchor one to the site’s scaffolding, but the others had to look in from outside the site or even across the street. I rarely use my GoPro camera in timelapse due to its limited storage space and lack of remote-monitoring capabilities, but it fit perfectly into a small corner of the roof and had just enough internal storage to capture the installation.

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Attaching one camera to the scaffolding both kept it out of the workers’ way and provided the necessary height to capture all of the action inside.

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Further complicating matters was the fact that I had to set up my cameras without full knowledge of what the frame would ultimately capture. Because the old cooling tower was surrounded by steel walls that wouldn’t come down until a few hours into the process, I had to position two of my cameras based on where I thought would be the best angle after the barriers had been removed. Thankfully, once the “box” was opened, both had a good look inside.

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Because the setup would face directly into the sun for a few hours of the shoot, I used a sunlight-tracking app to identify the periods that would need coverage from other angles.

Capturing such a small site from above did come with one unexpected perk: the presence of one of Philly’s most iconic landmarks. The clock tower above City Hall took on a guest-starring role, spinning its hands in the background as workers hurried through the night.

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    From atop City Hall, “Billy” Penn kept my solar-powered camera company as we waited for the old cooling tower’s walls to come down.

“Rich’s expertise and creativity in incorporating a variety of angles and editing techniques allowed us to document a busy weekend of "round-the-clock" work in a tight work area. This may have been our first project with Rich, but it certainly will not be our last!”

—Pat McEntee, Paradigm Mechanical