Safety Boat Duty

 We are supposed to be on Safety Boat Duty today. We are not going sailing so everyone can, but with the River Thames rising and flooding again, it's going to be at least three weeks before we can get out on the River.

Teleprompter

 For many videos, we don't use a teleprompter, as the film is live-action, but sometimes we need to work from a script and need a teleprompter to help. But keeping the flow of text natural is so much harder than it should be.

Insta cameras ready

 The cameras are now ready to be fitted to the boats. We plan to put several on a dinghy to watch me as I learn to sail and several on a camera boat, which will be a rib or similar for an external view. All we need now is the rain to stop, the river level to fall (its rising) and the wind to come up.

Playing the Wersi

 When playing a church organ, the top manual is often the swell and the bottom the great. On the Wersi, the top manual is usually the Melody and the bottom the accompaniment. Different software means I often change hands with different manuals set as different instruments and sounds.

GPS Remote

 Taking control of the insta360 camera with the GPS Remote via Bluetooth.

Olympus add on Lens

The add-on lens for telephoto work is a great idea when you need a waterproof camera and a longer reach on the lens. We often use a bigger camera, but sometimes this setup is more practical for getting shots in typical British weather.

Different perspective

 Looking at a normal view but from a different perspective.

No Sailing again

 Another week comes and goes. The wind and river levels were down, but the flow rate was too great, and the red boards were up. No sailing or even powerboating.

Outside filming

 Braving the cold and the rain to get the filming done. The weather hasn't been good this year, and waterproof cameras have been a must.

Synth Sounds

 We are creating our own sounds using VCV in Ableton Live. Quite a few interesting sounds can be made to augment a video rather than using the traditional Foley set-up.

Broken Fork

 Sometimes a break from work is just as hard as the work itself. Here, digging up a plant with a rather long root. Unfortunately, getting the root out broke the fork.

Stedilens

My first impressions of the Stedilens system are pretty good. The camera's weight is supported, and the balance is quite good. The camera glides well over the surface, making moving video shots a breeze.

 

ATC Chameleon

 One of our odd cameras but very useful sometimes, the forwards and backwards facing ATC Chameleon, with its two swivelling cameras that record two images at the same time.

Photography Show 2024

The Photography and Video show. There was nothing new, but we looked at some items we had yet to see. Things that caught our eye were the Canon VR lens for use on the boat, the Insta360 3m stick also for the boat, the Ace Pro camera, the Stedilens system, and the Plustek ai slide/negative copier. The show was busy, with many taking pictures of models and a few good presentations demonstrating how to achieve great portraits using different light techniques. We came back with tired feet, a geared tripod, the Plustek, a couple of stools to get a bit of height, a new strap for my wife's camera and the Steadilens system. The journey home by train could have been better, with us needing to stand even though we had reserved seats, and then the trains cancelled from Milton Keynes to Hemel. So we carried the Avanti train to Watford to find no trains from London and had to pay an extra £40 to get a taxi back to Hemel Station.

 

Filming on Location

 Some people get to go to exotic places. We are making a film for a local roofer, so we will get street photography and video instead.

Flour arrival

Many different flours have arrived to feed the ever-hungry bread machine and the quest for hot rolls at lunchtime.

 

3 Manual Eminent Organ

 Sitting at the 3 Manual Eminent organ. With 53 stops and some of them programmable, I can create most sounds of church and cathedral organs. This certainly has the sound of a very typical English Pipe organ.

Studio quality voiceover

 Creating voiceovers for videos requires good sound with no echo and no external sounds. We find the ISOBall helps with the elimination of the other sounds leading to cleaner and crisper sounds on the video.

Blackmagic 4K

The workhorse for many of my productions is the Blackmagic 4K. For much of the work, we only do HD, and for this, these cameras are ideal. The powered micro4/3 lenses are a game-changer to us, giving us full remote control of the camera.
 

Website change

 I  am not a great fan of WordPress, but I decided to build the pmrsailing site using it. It has been nothing but trouble, and hackers are using WordPress's weaknesses to gain control of the website. So, it's now under my control and being rewritten to stop those attacks and make the website more secure.

Old and the new

 Two different generations of keyboards from my very old psr 400 to the Genos.

Drone Prep

 The night before we flew the drone, we checked the batteries, made sure they were fully charged and made sure the system was up to date. Ready to fly, the system had to do an update lasting about ten minutes, and this also drained the batteries.

Boat cam

 Exploring different places to secure a camera on a dinghy. This is on the bow, either filming forward where the boat is going or backwards at the crew.

New Sounds

 Creating new sounds to play this delightful music by Tom Horton using @ableton live and the Novation 61SL Keyboard

Video Editing

 It seems that video editing takes 100x longer than filming. Sometimes the script needs to be changed to first in with the video we actually got rather than the video we planned.

Electrostatic Hair

Having a lot of fun with electrostatic Hair.

 

When you can't use a drone.

 It's very difficult to use a drone when working around houses and videoing men working on the roofs. This is where the polecam comes into its own and with a 360 camera some excellent shots can be captured that need an operator behind the camera to see normally.

Working at the Sailing Club

 Getting ready for sailing. Whilst the other members of the club got the outside ready for sailing later in the year, Paul and I spent the time sorting out the WiFi and the projector

Filming replacing a roof

 Filming replacing a roof for a local company. Some close-ups and some distance shots to add variety.

Not a permanent Studio

I can't afford the space for several permanent studios; I need setups in several different rooms and arrangements to cope with the different jobs I do, so each time I use a different set-up, there is a lot of rearranging to do.