Audio problems

Interviews
Looking back at the interviews done on Friday, the content is good and both interviewees were animated and interesting.

I’ve decided, however, to go back to letting my camcorder handle the audio levels automatically. Even though this does create problems when the camera doesn’t adjust fast enough to changing sound volume, it’s far better than me trying to control the sound levels myself. I’ve got far too much to do already as I’m working alone and setting up the lighting and camera as well as doing the interviews and adding sound control to that is a recipe for disaster. I’m giving myself far more problems in trying to do it. On this occasion, the problem was that I set the audio too low so boosting it means there’s a fair amount of hiss in the background. I can get rid of it, but it’s another layer of fussing during the edit I can do without.


Animations
I spent the afternoon putting together some final renders of some of the animations used in the documentary. This always takes longer than you think it will, because the lighting and camera angles always need messing around with.

The models have already been made, and I’ll I needed to do was set them in motion. Still it’ll render overnight and hopefully I’ll have something decent by tomorrow.


Cubesat
I’ve also emailed the makers of the cubesat micro-satellite system and got pretty positive responses. This is the first step of research in a new documentary idea I’ve got. Actually it’s more than a documentary idea – I want to save the world – and think I can do it with a $50,000 satellite…

The new documentary will allow me to follow some people who are building these micro-satellites as school projects. Hopefully, I can gather a few experienced people to help in this ambitious project – or at least let me find out if what I’m proposing is possible.
More on that later…