Bizzare!

Having filmed all day at Llandow Yesterday, it came as something of a nasty surprise when I got to the interviews which I'd recorded - having set the shot up nicely, got the exposures right, Ulrich had perfected the sound, and the subject spoke brilliantly and gave great answers to our question, with lots of enthusiasm for the car we were talking about.

Which one? I'm not telling you yet!

Anyway, the nasty surprise. Dropouts. Lots of them, getting steadily worse. Starting at about 40 minutes in. The problem was with the recording, due to dirt on the heads, we think, and is totally unrecoverable. I can't even understand the interview to transcribe it. It's a crying shame.

And the cause of this? Wierdly it's the brand of tape that I use. I have been using TDK tapes in the Z1s, and only since then have I had problems. Strangely enough the little JVC palmcorder runs the TDKs with no problems at all. It's all down to the lubrication the tape manufactuers use, or more accurately, the mixing of different lubricants from different manufactuers resulting in a sticky gunk all over the record heads. Apparently Uni have been aware of this for about a year - not that anyone thought to make a notice to us about it - and with a certain electronics supplier selling 10 packs of TDK on offer recently, the problem is now more frequent than before.

In the meantime, I now have to find a way of getting a 6 minute feature from what I've got left.

p.s. If anyone knows anyone who can lend me a motorcycle/motor racing driver's crash helmet for a couple of days to do a film shoot, please send them my way. It's not essential but it would be nice! Thanks in advance.

Update : I went to see my lecturer in Uni, and about half an hour after I told him of the problem, there was a notice up on Blackboard [a system my uni uses] warning other people of the problem! Amazing how quickly things get done if you talk to the right person isn't it?