I have retrieved countless documents and artifacts from the plant but the amount of video or audio evidence is limited. Luckily, I have located some of each and all have proven valuable if not priceless.
First up is the ovens department training video. This easily is the best evidence of the plant that exists today. Documents or even interviews with people who worked at the plant are great, but besides still photos there is nothing that will really bring you back like this video, of which I am very proud to have found.
While not as exciting as the video above, I also located an audio cassette sometime ago. Clearly, this was intended to accompany some visual aid. As I have dated the cassette to pre-1978, it would not have been a video (on any medium, VHS or otherwise). Perhaps slides – or transparencies on an overhead projector were used.
It only seemed like the right thing to do – to do give this narration the visual aid from which it has been detached, and perhaps one even better than what it once had. The 15 minute ovens department training video is the gold standard for coke plant footage, and luckily pushing is part of that department.
So I set out to combine the two. Initially I just tried to use the 13 minute audio narration, and put appropriate footage over it. But this was difficult as some topics are covered in the audio but there is no corresponding footage in the video. Generally it was frustrating and I almost abandoned the project. Instead, I sat down to edit the narration down to it’s bare essentials and this minimized it to less than 4 minutes. Looking back, I might have kept a few moments intact but I decided to carry on with my mission.
After a couple hours of toying with the material, I came up with a finished product. I am not totally happy with it but I think it is decent.
- I would like to edit the narration again, with a more careful hand. I know of at least a couple moments I deleted because I felt there was no corresponding footage to be used but in retrospect, there was.
- The video footage I used is compressed, it is the same file I uploaded to YouTube. If I did this again, I would rip the VHS tape again to uncompressed files and use that as my source footage for better video quality.
- I got a bit lazy and simply recycled the montage from the end of the video and used it (with just a couple tweaks) as the outro for this new video. Shots of lidmen, heaters, etc aren’t really active in the pushing process and maybe not the right choice to use imagery of.
Still, this took more work than it may seem and was highly frustrating at times. I hope you enjoy it!