AC75

I am learning all about the AC75 America's Cup Sailboats, from building the Lego model to playing the free AC Sailing simulator on Steam. It is interesting how they are designed and how difficult it is to actually sail them using the simulator.

 

Film Making

 With a little bit of sunshine, we can get outside filmmaking. The sunshine makes a huge difference to the quality of the pictures and videos taken, so much better than using artificial light.

Cleaning the brass masses

Cleaning some of the brass masses. After a while, they get grubby and look less nice for the students to handle and film. The students always seem to appreciate clean, new-looking equipment, and it takes effort to keep it that way. It also looks much better during filming, although reflections are sometimes a problem.

 

Filming forces and Acceleration

Filming Forces and Acceleration: In addition to filming the experiment, we mounted an Insta360 camera on the @pascoscientific smartcard to get a bird' s-eye view from the cart and watch the weight fall simultaneously.

 

Editing

 Every day we film, there are many editing days. Often, this is when we find that we need a b-roll of a scene that didn't turn out just as we wanted. The edit usually does not fit the plan quite as we expected, but we got a much better film.

Blackmagic Studio Camera

 The Blackmagic Studio camera is set up to get a good view of me sitting in the lab for the online teaching. This and three other cameras are on an ATEM attached to the streaming bridge connected to the ATEM Extreme in the studio, so we can easily use the lab, the studio, or both.

Filming in Heavy Rain

 There was heavy rain, but the Silver Burgee competition continued. Filming in these conditions, we used the Olympus Tough TG7 waterproof camera to get some grey shots and a video of the dingies struggling in very little wind.

Busy Filming Weekend

 It is not every day that a sailing club celebrates its 140th Anniversary. Upper Thames Sailing Club on the River Thames is one of the oldest and most prestigious sailing clubs, and to celebrate, there are boat races galore this weekend and lots of opportunities for some great video.

Organ Lesson

 The Wersi organ has cameras on the keys, pedals and me. I am preparing for a music lesson with Tom Horton over Zoom, learning to play the Dambusters March.

FLIR

 Taking a FLIR image of the house. The Solar panels are noticeably colder than the rest of the house in warm September sunshine. Taking this picture in the winter will give an idea of the heat loss.

Adjusting Photographs

My son adjusts the photographs for all Social Media. I compose a picture in the camera, but I have to think whether this is for a portrait view, a landscape, a square, or any of the above. Before we can use them, the photographs need to be resized and then colour-corrected.

360 video

 Using the 3m pole in a much lower position to get some 360 footage of the Southampton International Boat show #SIBS24 

Southampton Boat Show

 Spent Sunday walking around the Southampton International Boat Show, exploring many yachts - most out of my price range.

Business Card Making

 Some of my least favourite jobs running a business. Doing the accounts, making business cards and other company paper, sorting out insurances and keeping all the policies up to date.

Soundraw

 I created a short opening theme for a video using AI Soundraw. Later, I can extend this theme for other music in the video, choosing whether I want loud or soft music to accompany that part of the film.

Video from the boat

 We were taking a video from the boat. We moored behind a jetty, so we were out of the way but opposite the mark where the boats had to turn around. This allowed us to film all the Merlin Rockets as they competed to win a special silver cup. It also gave the association a good number of publicity photos.

Charging

 Filming is about capturing beautiful images and action shots. But I seem to spend most of my time charging batteries before the shoot and downloading the film to the computer and editing the footage. 5% filming and 95% doing everything else.

Reflection on the water

 Reflections danced on the still waters of the Thames. With the wind gone, the river lay calm, mirroring the dinghies perfectly in its glassy surface. #Thames #CalmWaters #Reflection

Calls getting Worse

 

About half my calls hang up as I answer. A third of them are cold sales calls pretending to do a survey or free this and that. Only a sixth of people really want to speak to me. Email is even worse. About 1% is relevant. How much time could I save if an AI could block all the irrelevant stuff?

Short video editing

 Editing a short video sometimes seems to take as long as editing a long video. All the footage needs to be synced in the same way, and sometimes, because the videos are shot differently, more effort needs to be put into the editing to get the required message across.

Music to Play

 Finding music to accompany soundtracks is different from a few years ago. AI can help compose the music, then move it to a written form and put it onto the iPad so I can play it with whatever instruments I want and whatever rhythm section I like on the electronic organ.

Solar Battery Stack

 The Solar battery stack is now in place and wired up. The system needs to be commissioned, and we should be able to store some electricity from the solar panels. However, the weather forecast calls for heavy rain and low clouds for the next few days.

Speed Editor

 I am using the speed editor to improve my editing. I find it more intuitive to use in Resolve than the normal editor, which my Son prefers.

Videoing the Slinky drop

 Videoing the Slinky drop. The students used their phones with varying degrees of success. I also filmed the drop so anyone who didn't capture good-quality images could use mine. Using a lot of light I could use a higher shutter speed and get better results.

Organ Concert

Maybe Roy Meeks's last Organ Concert at St Augustine's Church Luton. The audience was enthralled by some sea shanties, and the War March of the Priests concluded the recital. It was all up on the Big screen so everyone could admire the pedal work as well as the fingering.

 

Making the Check list

 We are checking that we have everything we need to do the live broadcast on the organ recital as we pack the car because we can't return and get anything. Will five cameras be enough?

Resolving the Network problems

 I had a strange network problem. My Windows 11 PC lost its ethernet connection and instead of connecting to the load balancer the gateway became a fictitious machine. Setting the IP manually didn't help but then getting the machine to go back to default did work.