12 mins, 2014

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A short documentary shot during my first ever holiday to New York City, which took in a hurricane, a Pixies tribute act and a presidential election. I arrived the morning of Hurricane Sandy, mostly oblivious to the seriousness of the coming storm until landing at LaGuardia and taking the bus to the boarded up streets of Manhattan. That night I abandoned the worst hotel in Chinatown as the storm hit, in favour of staying with friends in a Brooklyn brownstone AirBnB. The following day, an ex-colleague in London got in touch to plead for my presence on Staten Island, accompanying a local crew as they met some of the worst affected residents on the island (they were unable to fly any journalists into New York's closed airspace - in return for my help I got a massive hotel upgrade and my stay happily extended so I could stand in Times Square to witness Obama beating Romney from the neon city steps).

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This short combines my pre-smartphone camera clips with interviews and B-Roll from the local shoot (used with permission) - a video postcard from my NYC vacation.