Project 07 of 17
Analog Coffee
Cafés · Calgary, Alberta
Eight takes in ten minutes. Three of them indoors. Thirty-five photographs.
Analog Coffee's Greenbriar cafe sits at unit 130, 55 Greenbriar Drive NW, with Canada Olympic Park on the far side of Highway 1. Atom2Adam Studio filmed it from both sides of its own front door.
Outside: eight takes, ten minutes and forty seconds from the first to the last, climbing from the unit number on the glass until the hill comes up over the parapet. Inside: the same aircraft at ceiling height, turning above the espresso bar while the bar kept serving. A photographer found the rest — the timber joists, the letterboard menu, the grinders, the pastry case, the drone itself in mid-air between the beams, and a matcha doughnut in the sun on the patio.
- Subject
- Analog Coffee, unit 130, 55 Greenbriar Drive NW, Calgary — the cafe the company's own list calls Greenwich (Farmers' Market West), with Canada Olympic Park across Highway 1.
- Intent
- Begin close enough to read the unit number off the glass, and climb until the hill across the highway is in the frame.
- Seen
- A fascia and a roundel, a timber-joist ceiling, a letterboard menu in movable type, two grinders, a pastry case, a window counter of open laptops — and outside, a patio, a crosswalk, the Trans-Canada and a ski jump tower on a green hill.
- Made
- Eight aerial takes, ten minutes and forty seconds from the first to the last by the camera's own clock, three of them flown inside the cafe while it was serving; six films cut from them, two more already in hand from the same two source files, and thirty-five photographs from the ground. Nothing was staged and nobody was asked to move.
I
The name
ANALOG COFFEE, and the unit number on the glass.
The company's own list of cafes calls this one Greenwich (Farmers' Market West) and gives its address as 130 – 55 Greenbriar Dr NW. The door says the same thing in smaller letters, under the fascia, which is where the film starts.
Down from above the lot onto the awning.
The awning, the roundel, the doors.
The corner from above: Made By Marcus next door, the highway behind.
The front, from the patio up.
II
The room
Mid-morning: timber joists, log stools, plants along the glass.
Nothing overhead is printed. The ceiling is bare timber joists on steel, and the menu is movable type set by hand on wooden slats — two price columns, headed 12 OZ and 16 OZ, with the iced list running down the right-hand side.
Inside, past the fig, down the window counter.
The banquette, and the light across the floor.
Dracaena and fig against bare plaster.
Along the window wall, stools at the sill.
The joists, running back over the menu.
Photographing the plants at the window.
III
The bar
Straight down over the bar. The filename said: use the last three seconds.
Analog opened its first cafe in 2011 at the Calgary Farmers' Market, and the 17th Avenue flagship followed in 2012. The work at the bar has not changed since: a pitcher, a portafilter, a cup, and somebody watching the clock on a shot.
The machine, the retail shelf, the board above.
Two at the machine, milk going in.
The group head; a pour into a blue Analog cup.
Movable letters on slats, 12 oz and 16 oz.
Bacon sando, garden sando, egg bites, Cali club bunwich.
The case from the side: scones, loaves, price cards.
The top shelf, filled with croissants.
Two grinders, hoppers full, on the copper tile.
A barista at the brew bar.
Shoulder to shoulder behind the bar.
The bar from directly overhead, cups on the steel.
Above the bar, turning, at the pace of a slow morning.
In front of the retail shelving.
IV
The flight
The drone, indoors, between the joists.
The drone flew indoors, at ceiling height, while the bar kept serving.
The controller, and the room on its screen.
Thirteen takes were rolled and the client kept eight; the other five are in a folder called "Dont use" and are not on this page. From the first take to the last, by the camera's own clock, is ten minutes and forty seconds — and three of those takes are inside the room.
At rest on the floor, a window's shadow across it.
Flown from the counter, with the room going on.
Under the hanging fig, watching it fly.
The board, photographed from below.
Behind the counter, beside the case.
The second camera, mic on top.
V
The morning
A matcha doughnut; a chocolate croissant.
The patio faces the lot, and round the corner at 45 Greenbriar Lane NW the ice cream shop describes itself as just steps from the Calgary Farmers' Market West and Analog Coffee. In these frames the unit next door, number 120, still has a bookshop's coming-soon notice in its window.
Red iced drink, croissant, doughnut, hard sun.
The whole order, and the iced coffee in the sun.
The leaf poured into a dark mug.
The table in the sun, twice.
The front, brick and black steel, from the patio.
VI
The hill
The pull-back. The hill arrives over the roofline.
This neighbourhood is Greenwood/Greenbriar, bounded by the Trans-Canada Highway to the south and the Bow River to the north — and Canada Olympic Park borders it across that highway. Highway 1 follows 16 Avenue N through Calgary for twenty-seven kilometres and runs west to the British Columbia border at Kicking Horse Pass.
The corner: patio, crosswalk, lot, then the highway.
The crosswalk's yellow bars, and the trees coming in.
From the letter on the door to the ski jump tower, and the camera never left the block.
Where it started: the bar, from the ceiling.
Detail → Whole
Analog Coffee ends. 17 projects in the collection.
