U-Matic

Hart Plaza Footage for P.S.A.

U-Matic tape containing silent footage shot in Hart Plaza, followed by several poor-quality takes of a voice-over for an advertisement for the September Song event in the Cultural Center.

The tape begins with several shots of the Hart Plaza sign, promoting the Italian Festival and Henry Yee Chinese Cuisine. In one shot the Detroit Citizen's Railway trolley passes on Jefferson Avenue in one take. The next shot is a pan from the north end to the south of Hart Plaza. People walking through the plaza, closed vendor booths, and people seated around the base of the Pylon sculpture are visible in this shot. Several zooms on the Horace E. Dodge and Son Memorial Fountain follow. In these shots, the masts of a sailing ship--likely Greenpeace's FRI--on the Detroit River beyond the fountain are visible. After the Dodge Fountain shots is a series of pans shot just to the east of the fountain, spanning the skyline of Downtown, westward to the fountain. During these shots, several visitors to the plaza walk through the scene. After several takes, the camera then pans down the side of the Renaissance Center to two men talking beside a wall along the east side of Hart Plaza. Next, the camera pans from a group of children playing near the picnic tales in the southwest corner of the plaza, past the spiral shaped ramp around the vent towner, the banner for a Greenpeace Water for Life event, to the sales and rigging of the ship of the riverfront. Several more zooms from the towers of the Renaissance Center occur next on the tape. This portion of the tape ends with a shot of two women talking on the wall along the edge of Hart Plaza.

The remainder of the tape includes a heavily distorted voice over in the left audio channel concerning September Song in the University Cultural Center.

The video is on a MBU-18 U-Matic S tape with a handwritten 3M UCA 5 label on the top. The tape is housed within a black plastic latching clamshell case with a torn 3M label on the cover.