This day was the last day of the 2004 season… No tapings, no food, no project… I took all of my wires in and called it a year, but because I was feeling highly sentimental as I was shutting the whole thing down, I wrote a message to all who particpated in my project during the 2004 season (yes, I’m that strange) The note read:
To all my animal stars~
This year was an interesting year; a year of many achievements in both equipment and techniques in acquiring and tinkering with this project - although that really means nothing to you! ~ and although none of you can read this, I would like to thank you all for giving me a spectacular year! I have more clips (and in better quality) of the squirrels (you know who you are!), the birds (very nice work to the parent grackle and it’s chicks!) and the other animals that have come to partake in the enigma of the BFP Project. It has been a great year, and hopefully the next time I have a chance to set up, it will be as popular (or even moreso) as it was when I took it down this day. Have a nice future (and bring some raccoons next time! :))
Your Omnipresent-Yet-Nonexistant Observer,
Zach Glenwright
Saturday morning,
September the 4th, 2004
Yes, once again, I’m that strange… And no - I never heard back…
During the last few days of August when the squirrels were doing all kinds of things to get food, I wanted to make sure that I could get shots without putting an expensive camera outside, so I went on eBay and checked their wonderful product line… I eventually found what I was looking for, an old 8mm camcorder with the tape transport taken out. “Can’t play tapes, but still gives a video signal.” Well, that’s what I wanted in the first place - a camera that only fed video back and had some sort of LANC capability… and I got it - for $10. Now I had another camera for under $15 (with shipping) that I could use as a feed source, along with (surprising to me) a full LANC-compatible jack! I could use it for another angle! Just think of what I could do with three angles of the same shot! This day was only done to test the camera out, and it isn’t the first test of the “$10 camera” (it’s actually the 2nd), but it is a day that uses the camera exclusively for it’s feed - as you can see, the camera doesn’t like mics plugged into it, apparently, because the sound from the output is all crosstalk and radio signals - not exactly what I was going for, there… but, what are you going to expect with a $10 camera and a cheapo $5 computer mic… really!
BFP 9-2-04 (Demo) [0:30m]: