Filming at the BIS
Yesterday I spent the whole day at the British Interplanetary Society Warp Drive symposium. A small event gathering scientists interested in faster than light travel by manipulating the fabric of spacetime.

Ok, it sounds pretty outlandish.

However, not to misrepresent them, they’re actually physicists interested in the mathematics of some strange phenomena thrown up by Einstein (among others). They’re not talking about developing a warp drive any time soon. In fact they’re not even convinced it’s possible.

What they are saying is that there are some intriguing possibilities in current theories which don’t rule out the possibility of traveling faster than light. In fact, exotic ideas like other dimensions, wormholes and negative energy are quite well accepted in physics – however bizarre they might seem. And the idea of time passing differently depending on where you’re standing has actually been tested and found to be true!

Anyway, the event was small – about 40 people – and most of the presentations were beyond me – the maths is just too complex.

Everyone’s welcoming and helpful and they set me up in their library – very quiet and easy to light. But it gets to midday and I haven’t done any interviews. It’s difficult to get anyone alone for long enough.

Eventually I manage to get 4 interviews. One of which I’ve not lit very well – his face is quite dark - but I can rescue it in Premiere.

Another has sound problems – I’ve decided not to let the camera handle the audio adjustment automatically because last time I did I was interviewing someone about shark teeth and every time he got to the end of a sentence, the volume dropped, so the camera adjusted the mike up. Then when he started talking again, he was a little too loud and it took a fraction of a second to adjust down again.

This was fine most of the time, but if the sentence started with a hard consonant (like the T in Teeth for example) it distorted slightly.

However adjusting manually this time gave another problem – I adjusted the mic and started the interview. The mic was rubbing against his jacket, so I asked him to move it. that meant it was closer to his face and I got the same problem again because I was concentrating on the interview and didn’t notice!

The other two interviews are pretty good – although they’re more rushed than I’d have liked as I had to do them at lunch and at the end of the day. I didn’t get time to have much of the lunch – which was good because I didn’t tell them I didn’t eat meat and they served lamb. I didn’t want to say anything because they were being so generous and helpful.

I recorded an hour of the question and answer session at the end of the day – mainly for the society’s benefit. The sound won’t be good enough for broadcast. However, it will work as cut-aways hopefully.

A necessary waste of time
Today I spent the whole morning capturing, and looking at my footage and editing the following 2 minute clip. Probably I won’t use any of it.



However, I can’t help thinking it’s a worthwhile exercise at the beginning of a project like this. It reassures me that I will be able to get something useful out of what I’ve shot and gives me some kind of handle on how the programme might eventually look.

It feels like I haven’t done anything, but at least now there’s something concrete to show potential interviewees – I’ll have to get it up on my website.

I got a reply from one of the magazines I wrote to about the possibility of covering the conference … the editor said I should get back to them if there was anything interesting at the event. My feeling is, however, that they’ve already covered the basic warp bubble idea and I lack the understanding to delve deeply into the specific and rather vertical subjects discussed at the event, so I don’t think I’m going to be able to offer anything to them.

However, the BIS are interesting people and friendly. They’re also hosting a big conference next year in Glasgow… maybe if they like what I’ve done with this one, they might actually hire me for that… you never know.