What we saw

September 14, 2006 4:56 PM

. (embedded QT, via Ursi)
posted by Substrata (49 comments total)

Awfully dull videos with someone going oh my god oh my god repeatedly. Nothing we didn't see on the news 1000 times before. Grrrr.....they should have kept it for the family album. But Ursis blog is nice.
posted by lalochezia at 5:02 PM on September 14, 2006

Great first response.
posted by trey at 5:05 PM on September 14, 2006

One-word links not good enough for you, eh? Some warning would be nice. Some of us would rather NOT relive those particular moments.
posted by rikschell at 5:10 PM on September 14, 2006

how creepy is that "this old man" in the background?

she lives in Battery Park City?
posted by amberglow at 5:10 PM on September 14, 2006

Yes, that music is also a warcrime.
posted by riotgrrl69 at 5:13 PM on September 14, 2006

i never saw such a close-up view as this (i decided i'm watching til she catches a jumper)
posted by amberglow at 5:16 PM on September 14, 2006

i don't know either, why they never dropped water on the buildings or tried to bring helicopters there to get people.
posted by amberglow at 5:20 PM on September 14, 2006

i miss Aaron Brown.
posted by amberglow at 5:25 PM on September 14, 2006

Awfully dull videos with someone going oh my god oh my god repeatedly. Nothing we didn't see on the news 1000 times before.

actually, this was the first time I've been able to see what happened without a news anchor or special guest expert commentator etc shitting out one-liners.

my first thoughts watching this were about how unreal it looks. there's just so much smoke pouring out of the windows and at such a speed that it almost looks like steam coming out of a miniature. and the holes on two sides of the building...how did a plane make that kind of damage? but it did happen. I wish they had left the camera on and caught the second plane but it's probably best that they didn't for the sake of brevity and my nerves.

the absolute cacophony of sirens when she opened the window really startled me too. that sound alone was probably more terrifying than the spectre of the WTC in flames. at one point, the woman behind the camera made some comment about how they're gonna have to dump water from planes because the fires were so high up and it made me think about just how would someone go about suppressing a fire in that situation. but from the news, I knew the answer: fire fighters had to actually get up into the building. go in from the bottom, and then go all the way up. it's easy to forget just how tall the WTC was but from this angle you can really see how it dwarves the buildings around it. and knowing now that the building was going to collapse and kill a number of the men behind those sirens... and then watching it collapse and hearing the women in the background break down and start crying... maybe next time I'll think twice before making a lame joke about 9/11.

(this was an interesting video, but the post could have been worded better. or rather, worded at all.)
posted by mcsweetie at 5:30 PM on September 14, 2006 [1 favorite]

thanks
posted by amberglow at 5:33 PM on September 14, 2006

Sure, shitty post, but that's a pretty amazing video. I haven't seen anything like it before, i.e. a long first-person account. The amount of smoke from the second building is incredible.
posted by mrgrimm at 6:00 PM on September 14, 2006

Wow. Very interesting to see a passive viewer's version of it and not the media's. Are there more amateur videos like this?
posted by Big_B at 6:01 PM on September 14, 2006

or tried to bring helicopters there to get people.

They did. There's a chilling video from the helicopter flying over, but it couldn't land in those conditions, and if it it could... there was no one up there to pick up.
posted by yeti at 6:07 PM on September 14, 2006

The scariest part for me was when I realized just how frustrated I got every time she moved the camera. I was worried that I would miss seeing some crucial part of the action.

Ditto mcseetie's comment about the value of seeing the whole thing without some heartfelt VO from a newsreader about how Nine Eleven Changed Everything. I'm glad to have this.
posted by hifiparasol at 6:21 PM on September 14, 2006

Nothing new. And why do these Mossad agents not actually film the collapse.

OHMIHGUD
posted by fire&wings at 6:24 PM on September 14, 2006

If nothing else the sound of the buildings collapsing was a new element for me.
posted by mss at 6:25 PM on September 14, 2006

actually, this was the first time I've been able to see what happened without a news anchor or special guest expert commentator etc shitting out one-liners.

Funny, the last time I checked most televisions had mute buttons.
posted by dhammond at 6:33 PM on September 14, 2006

That was a frightening video. I'm surprised there hasn't been more of these...was everyone just watching CNN?
posted by furtive at 6:46 PM on September 14, 2006

There are scores of videos like this, has nobody heard of the internet, youtube? *scratcheshead*
posted by oxala at 6:59 PM on September 14, 2006

More "..." than "." if you ask me.
posted by DenOfSizer at 7:17 PM on September 14, 2006

Congratulations, you made me feel like shit without actually enlightening me in any way. Great post.
posted by Citizen Premier at 7:20 PM on September 14, 2006

Why do I find it odd that the video decidedly cuts out at important points during the recording (eg plane hitting tower, tower collapsing).

Why is it that the woman all of sudden decides to say that people are "being attacked"? I mean, did people really make up their minds that quickly about what exactly was happening?

All due respect to those who lost loved ones. Perhaps it's just me, but something inside of me is screaming "this sounds rehearsed".
posted by wesley at 7:36 PM on September 14, 2006

Are there more amateur videos like this?

I have one filmed from the terrace of my old apartment on Rector St, 3 blocks south of WTC, a lot closer than this video. It starts a few minutes after the first plane hit, stops for a while my gf and I went up to WTC like idiots, almost getting hit by debris when the 2nd plane hit right above us as we stood in the middle of Church St, resumes when we made our way back home, then ends when WTC 2 collapsed and we ran for our lives for the 2nd time that day. It was actually used by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to help determine why and how the buildings collapsed.

No desire to post it, but while the images are intense, the sound is equally amazing. Sirens like you've never heard before. And you can actually hear the buildings popping and creaking, and us talking about whether we should leave because of fear of a collapse. And the sound of the collapse was so loud and long and terrible. As bad as the screaming jet engines and explosions of the impacts. The one thing you don't get a good sense of in all the TV coverage is the how loud and awful the sounds were.
posted by chris24 at 7:46 PM on September 14, 2006

What, wesley, do you think she rehearsed it on the 10th? And she cut out the exciting parts so there would be no evidence of the planes hitting?

It all makes so much sense now.
posted by bondcliff at 7:48 PM on September 14, 2006

"this sounds rehearsed"

You must be kidding. I'm not sure I should waste time responding to such a ridiculous comment, but the towers have been attacked before. I'm sure the thought occured to many people.
posted by itchylick at 8:04 PM on September 14, 2006

Well, she was able to insert some text into the beginning of the movie; why not mention the fact that there are glaring omissions of some important events in the WTC disaster (and possible reasons why)?

All she had to do was mention her A) battery went dead or B) that she was switching media in/out of the camera C) etc

Really, with all the questions about that day could she not take out a few moments and (by means of some later footage of her, or some comments in the hosted video site, or a link to a diary entry etc etc) answer some of the more obvious ones.

Sometimes I really dislike being one of those kids who grew up always asking others "Why?"
posted by wesley at 8:10 PM on September 14, 2006 [1 favorite]

Why do I find it odd that the video decidedly cuts out at important points during the recording

Is this a joke?

I saw the video a few days ago and the collapse is definitely there (well, of the second tower). In addition, you do realize that the person didn't know the towers were going to collapse, right? Or that a second plane was coming?

Holy fuck, talk about hindsight being 20/20.
posted by dobbs at 8:12 PM on September 14, 2006

I'm sure the thought occured to many people.

Agreed...I can understand someone not being sure of the intent of the incident early on, when there were some people assuming it was a prop plane. But once you find out it's a jet airliner, the writing is on the wall. Or at least it should be.
posted by dhammond at 8:13 PM on September 14, 2006

I've always wanted to see an amateur video of this event. It was fascinating but I am surprised at how disturbing it was.
posted by redteam at 8:27 PM on September 14, 2006

haven't watched but days later I was forwarded a link to video shot from inside wtc 7, which was later destroyed itself.
posted by mwhybark at 8:49 PM on September 14, 2006

Why is it that the woman all of sudden decides to say that people are "being attacked"?

Most of us thought or knew it was intentional so that really equals attack anyway. Planes don't ever fly right over Manhattan like that nor so low. She had the tv on in the background too, so she may have picked it up from all the speculation they were doing in the beginning--she also speaks of it being a military plane hitting instead of a passenger plane.
posted by amberglow at 9:00 PM on September 14, 2006

Quite interesting. Certainly the most detailed wide shots I've seen -- everything on TV is blocky.
posted by VulcanMike at 9:18 PM on September 14, 2006

Certainly the most detailed wide shots I've seen -- everything on TV is blocky.

Me too. Watching the eddy and swirl of the dust is amazing.
posted by peeedro at 9:20 PM on September 14, 2006

Rehearsed? Get out.

It doesn't matter that we didn't get the money shot of the plane exploding/impact, whole shot of the tower falling (since we all seen that).

Why is it that the woman all of sudden decides to say that people are "being attacked"? I mean, did people really make up their minds that quickly about what exactly was happening?

Because if you remember, no one knew what the hell was going on at the time. Many conclusions were drawn, at first sight, an attack seems the most reasonable explanation.
posted by Diamornte at 9:24 PM on September 14, 2006

wesley: something inside screaming: "that's the stupidest thing I've heard in quite some time."
posted by bob sarabia at 9:34 PM on September 14, 2006

Good video. I don't think I've ever seen the debris cloud from that sort of angle before.

But man, this is a crap post. If anything calls for some brief descriptive text, it's 9/11 footage... please don't surprise people with this sort of thing.
posted by Galvatron at 10:02 PM on September 14, 2006

I never thought I'd be saying this about a 9/11 post, but: Thank you.

You see, I've been a 9/11 retard, in a way, because I missed out on the immediacy of the events and did not experience their impact in anywhere near the typical way. I am an American citizen, born and raised, but on 11 September 2001, I was overseas in a low-news situation. Despite TV news, email, and third-hand telephone reports from Americans, I was insulated from what went on. The news and the magnitude of it broke slowly for me.

To give you an idea, when it started, my only informant was an impressively drunk man who stumbled out of a bar to buttonhole me. "You guys are under attack," he insisted; "New York's being bombed, the White House has been flattened, your whole military will be under arms in a day ..." And I thought, "Yeah, yeah. If you sobered up every week or so, you'd learn to tell the difference between the news and Independence Day," and I ignored him till he went away.

Half an hour later, he returned to interrupt my English lesson with more of the same. "It's the BBC News," he said, and I went into the bar so he'd shut up and saw a wide shot of New York with a plume of smoke rising, and heard something about the World Trade Center, and that was all. Well, OK, it's not the first time something in America has been bombed, not even the first time for the WTC. I went back to my English class and added 'terrorism' to our vocabulary chart, and made another mental note about living in perilous times.

Most of the day's drama had already ended before I saw my only other TV news, ten endlessly-looped seconds of the second plane hitting and the top third of the first tower collapsing. This was accompanied by misinformed commentators in two foreign languages who seemed to put the number of hijacked planes at eleven. The correct number of planes was settled an hour later by a friend who'd had a phone call from someone who talked to someone who'd been on the phone with Americans back home. And the next day, my email correspondents assumed I knew what everybody knew, and didn't bother telling me the obvious. Three weeks later I received some print media in the mail and was dumbfounded to learn that both towers had fallen to the ground.

So perhaps you can imagine that it's a little weird for me when I'm around other Americans and the subject comes up. It's like I have a severe case of Asperger's syndrome all of a sudden. Everybody else shares this profound emotional memory, and I ... have this crazy detached perspective, alone. It's a perspective that doesn't include many sudden shocks, much less an entire day of video playing in loops while foolish newscasters blather about 'unimaginable' numbers of deaths;* but it does include having already had some idea how ambiguously the rest of the world feels toward Uncle Sam, and it includes knowing that, despite the terrible tragedy and despite how it felt to Americans, the world did not stop turning. And I wouldn't trade my 'crazy' detached perspective away—but at the same time, it's good to understand how everyone else feels about it. This video helped. So, thank you.

* On 'unimaginable' death counts: For crying out loud, you can't imagine three thousand people? When's the last time you were in a full sports arena? What was its seating capacity? Twenty thousand? Sixty thousand? Heck, even my high school was two thousand students, and I can very readily imagine all of them dead. Go to Auschwitz, you twit; then come back and tell me about 'unimaginable' death counts.
posted by eritain at 2:09 AM on September 15, 2006 [1 favorite]

Chris24, I can of course completely understand if you don't want to post your video but I, for one, wish that you'd reconsider. I know of nothing else that captured the sounds made by the building itself before collapse.
posted by r1ch at 2:33 AM on September 15, 2006

I thought this was a great piece of video. Just personally, in the last five years, I have been so sickened by the outcome of 9/11 - the arguments, the war, the political rubbish, the deaths, the restrictions on flying, and then the following attacks - that I tried my best to shut it all out of my life. Making the decision to watch this video a few days ago meant that I was revisiting the day, but without media control.

I appreciate the fact that this was put on the internet for everyone to view for free, barely edited, and that no-one was intervening to push "their view". It shows what happened from the direct POV of the people in the city - not the major broadcasters who merely repeated the same 3 minutes of footage over a three day period. I'm intending to burn this to CD, and hopefully make sure that my future children see this, instead of receiving a potentially biased/corrupt education from schools and the media on what came to be a monumental point in Western history.
posted by saturnine at 2:47 AM on September 15, 2006

eritain, thanks for that.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:00 AM on September 15, 2006

"And this happens every day, right, in the Middle East? And you think to yourself about how lucky we are that we've never had this terrible thing before. You can just imagine living [through this every day]..."
posted by hugsnkisses at 6:22 AM on September 15, 2006

eritain: a bit of a similar story, though not the same. A good friend of mine had a cornea transplant on Sept. 10, 2001. He was blindfolded on Sept. 11 and continued blindfolded for the next thirty days.

He says that a lot of people watched the news footage around him and he heard thirty days of comments like "it's unbelievable, OMG, I can't believe it, oh, no, people are jumping" and all the sort of things we all said when we watched it the first time. He says he kept picturing it in his head.

After thirty days of hearing about it all the time, and hearing the comments and the audio, when he finally took off the blindfold, that footage was the first thing he wanted to see. He says it still was more impressive than what he had imagined being blindfolded.
posted by micayetoca at 8:31 AM on September 15, 2006 [2 favorites]

micayetoca, have your friend contact This American Life. Seriously.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:33 AM on September 15, 2006

I clicked the link, and I watched the video in its entirety (whilst listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor of all things)... It must be some kind of perverse curiousity that kept me there, but when you see it so raw and unedited, it takes on a whole new angle. Yes, it's hard to empathise with the people there on that day, because we have the luxury of hindsight. Any why didn'ts and what ifs are redundant.

And after watching it, and being genuinely moved & having a better understanding of the apocalyptic sights of that day, I was afraid to read the comments in this thread. It's a touchy subject, and yes, substrata could have made this a better post by wording it somehow. But I think any framing seems in appropriate... mentioning 9/11 invites the vicious factions into the thread, and anyway, it's not long before you realise what it is. Unwrapping presents must be hell for you. Sometimes there are no words. Learn to love the Unknown.

I was not disappointed however, when I began to read some of the responses. This place is notoriously bitchy, so I'd like to thank those who actually had something worthwhile to say for sharing. I lurk too often in this place for fear of throwing myself on the fire, but I can now say I have made my first and probably last comment in a 9/11 thread, so thanks again for the contributions.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's 3am and my nerves are pretty thin, so I'll just turn out the light and be on my way.
posted by Acey at 7:01 PM on September 15, 2006 [1 favorite]

Acey writes "This place is notoriously bitchy, so I'd like to thank those who actually had something worthwhile to say for sharing. I lurk too often in this place for fear of throwing myself on the fire, but I can now say I have made my first and probably last comment in a 9/11 thread, so thanks again for the contributions."

No, you should speak up more often, Acey.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:50 PM on September 15, 2006

We've put up a page to answer common questions about the video.

Thanks for the kind comments.

Best,

--Bob and Bri.
posted by wtcbpc at 9:37 PM on September 15, 2006 [1 favorite]

what goodnews said, Acey.

And thanks for putting the video online, Bob and Bri--i hope you guys are ok--and Lily too. : >
posted by amberglow at 1:38 PM on September 16, 2006

very cool that you're releasing it as a torrent too--please post the link here when it's up and ready--thanks!
posted by amberglow at 1:41 PM on September 16, 2006

On 'unimaginable' death counts: For crying out loud, you can't imagine three thousand people?

Just for the record, it wasn't clear for quite a while how many people were in the building. People intially thought the death toll was as high as 50 or 60,000.
posted by CunningLinguist at 3:19 PM on September 16, 2006