Flashbulbs, flashcubes, and special guest!
Added 2024-01-31 17:17:52 +0000 UTCIn an instant, there was a flash of light:
This was very fun to make, for several reasons! I am so excited to finally share this with you. This project began before the move even happened, and then, well, the move got in the way of writing the script and actually turning this into a video.
Speaking of the move, a programming note regarding the audio:
Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but I did use a little processing to reduce background noise in places. I adjusted my hair light (y'all were right, the shadows were weird) and in doing so had to reposition the mic. Whatever I did caused background noise to get picked up a lot more than it has before, so there's definitely more experimentation to be done on that.
In the meantime, I'm actually blown away by how good Premiere's Denoise plug-in is at just... killing background noise without hurting the vocals too much. Like, it's astounding! I don't want to lean on that too much, and I was keyframing how much it applied to hopefully keep distortion to a minimum, but that is at least an option.
Anyway, let me know what you think of the audio. I will still be doing some additional isolation to the filming room, and I'll be putting extra attention to the area above the mic. While I could switch to using a lav, I really don't want to if I can avoid it.
Also a note: captions will take me a while. Usually I at least paste in the script so formatting is correct, but I still have to transcribe a lot of the video. Auto-generated captions are in place but they're probably not fantastic, so apologies there. I might not even be able to finish them today, and if I don't I'll delay this video's release until Friday. But we'll see - it's just going to be a lot fiddlier than usual.
OK, well, bye!
Comments
In the 1986 John Lithgow movie _The Manhattan Project_, the character Paul builds a nuclear device with easily obtained materials, among other things including flashbulbs. Since becoming a sciency adult nerd, I've always wondered why flashbulbs might be useful in making a nuke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2KIh1at5Jk If flashbulbs are just zirconium burning as you've shown, I wouldn't expect that to produce ionizing radiation of a type that might be useful. Is it just a fictitious plot device? I note that scientists have been able to make X-rays from cellophane tape. So maybe something weird under the right conditions?
Burt Humburg
2024-02-04 06:56:10 +0000 UTCI don't think the "primer" beads are what you think they are. I'm thinking it may be just the property of the filament. As seen here https://youtu.be/kexteGM2V2s?si=CQsrg7CX6p6PBASW&t=358
2024-02-03 03:44:41 +0000 UTCThis was a good one, and the sort of thing that makes me feel good about the Patreon membership as well. Discovering the incendiary beads on the filament so the flash would still go off on a weak battery is the sort of thing that would be lost to time and yellowing patent diagrams. Entropy forgets all sins, so you have to periodically stir up old knowledge to keep it in the gene pool.
Christopher Wenham
2024-02-02 23:09:13 +0000 UTC
