Monday, April 18, 2022
8:34 a.m. Phannu House, Room 1102
Mae Sot, Thailand
Another late start this morning. This is partially because I had a late start yesterday. If you wake up later in the morning on one day, the rhythm of that day gets pushed forward. You end up with more energy and feeling less tired later that night than you normally would. And therefore, you go to bed later. And then you might sleep the normal amount of time, and you end up waking up later again.
This time, I actually woke up quite early. I generally wake up constantly during the night. A normal night would likely see me wake up fully and then go back to sleep again at least five times and often many more times than that. And this morning, I was fully awake at five in the morning, as I often am. And I often get out of bed at that time. But I knew I hadn’t slept enough, so I forced myself to stay in bed. And I slept for another hour until six, when I woke up again. But I still felt off. So I forced another hour of sleep on my system. I woke up at seven. And again I decided to try to sleep again. And to my surprise, I did. I finally got out of bed at eight. I probably woke up and forced myself to go back to sleep ten times throughout last night. It was a marathon. But I feel pretty good nonetheless.
Yesterday’s small adventures took a lot of energy. I had this idea to return to the MJ Coffee Flavor Hunter coffee shop and shoot a kind of profile video of the place. And I did that with much effort. And then I spent a lot of the rest of the day editing that video and gnashing my teeth and pulling out my hair at all the mistakes I made in the video and all the problems I faced. I keep thinking how surprising it is that after all this time, shooting any type of video is still a technological jungle filled with dangers. Everything goes wrong all the time. When I think I’ve made every mistake that exists and that I’ve prepared for them all, I will find a brand new mistake, one that has never happened before. There is no end to the challenges and problems involved in shooting video.
However, there were some positives. As I was getting my cameras ready for the project, I decided to combine using the G85 on the GoPro Max Grip with the GoPro on a chest harness. And to make the GoPro less obtrusive, I wore my shirt with the buttons. That allowed me to wear the harness underneath my shirt and keep it completely hidden. The GoPro mount simply stuck through the opening between two buttons. I’ve done that before, and I found that it worked surprisingly well. And looking at the video that I recorded with that GoPro, I’m probably going to cut a whole in the chest of all my shirts so that I can hide the chest harness under T-shirts as well. I can try to cut as small a hole as possible in just the right place so that the GoPro mount can stick through. The hole does not have to be very large.
I’m willing to do this and ruin all my shirts because the video I captured using this technique added immeasurably to the video. Without it, I would have had my usual style of video containing just me talking mixed with shots of the interior of the coffee shop. Any interaction I had with people in the coffee shop would normally not be recorded. It’s simply too awkward to record any of that while holding a camera in my hand. But with the GoPro mounted on my chest harness, I was able to record all the conversations I had with the owners of the coffee shop, both of whom spoke English. I’m so happy with that video that I now want to adopt this technique as a standard approach.
Also on the positive side of the ledger is the fact that the video quality from the G85 is quite nice. There is no question that it looks better than video from a GoPro. It just does. It’s richer and more natural. The G85 is also much more reliable, and that helps my mood and frame of mind immensely as I’m not struggling with the GoPro freezing and glitching and overheating while also struggling with just the normal challenges of shooting video. That being said, the G85 introduced some new challenges. And those are what I’m going to rant about now.
The first mistake had nothing to do with the G85 or the GoPro. It was the fault of my dumb brain. I spent a very long time in my room preparing the cameras for this expedition. Batteries were fully charged. All of my mounting systems were set up, and I had all the necessary tools in my backpack to adjust to other situations. But despite all that, I hadn’t recorded more than two minutes of video while walking down the street before the camera stopped recording, and I was informed that the memory card was full. I had taken the time to go over every piece of gear and double and even triple check it. Even with all that, I had still forgotten to check the memory card in the G85 to see if it had enough room left for new video. And it didn’t. I should have put in a fresh memory card, but that detail got lost in the flurry of other details that I did check. I really must add to my technology wish list a couple of large-capacity SD cards. I currently have nearly all 16-gigabyte cards. They were the appropriate size for taking photographs. But they are too small for video. I really must get a couple of large-capacity cards in the future. Luckily, I think that full-sized SD cards are cheaper than MicroSD Cards.
The memory card filling up was more than just a small problem, because it occurred just as I was walking down the extremely hot street to the coffee shop. And that is a key period of time for the success of a video project. I get very hot and sweaty and kind of flustered back in my room as I go through the process of setting up my cameras. But then I take a step back, and I take a cold shower and relax for a few minutes before I actually leave. That gives me the best chance of being relaxed and cool and happy when I arrive at the place where I’m going to shoot video. I don’t want to arrive there hot and sweaty and flustered. I had a very good chance of accomplishing this yesterday, because the coffee shop is located a very short distance from Phannu House. There was a very good chance that I could leave Phannu House cool and dry and refreshed and arrive at MJ Coffee Flavor Hunter in that same happy state. However, that requires that nothing goes wrong along the way. But since the memory card filled up, I had to stop part way there and find a place where I could sit down at the side of the road, and in the blazing hot sun, get out my camera bag and change the memory card. That involved checking a bunch of things and rechecking the camera and doing a quick test to ensure that the new memory card is working. And by the time I did all that, I was hot and sweaty and somewhat flustered. And that’s how I arrived at the coffee shop.
From that point, the problems mainly centered on audio. What a nightmare. For one thing, they were playing music at the coffee shop. Normally that would mean I just can’t take any video, and I’d have to abandon the whole project. In this case, however, there was so much ambient noise that I thought I might be able to get away with it. The coffee shop was very busy and the other customers were making a lot of noise. There were also all the normal noises of a modern coffee shop. There was the intense hissing of the milk steamer, the loud grinding of the coffee bean grinders, the roar of the blender and other machines in general. It was very much like being on a factory floor filled with industrial tools. And there was something about the design of this coffee shop that appeared to amplify the noise. It was an echo chamber. The noise levels were astonishing. This was a good thing in that I’m hoping that the music was simply lost in the overall din and that I won’t have a copyright problem on YouTube. The music was also coming from a fairly limited spot. I don’t think there were speakers spread out over the entire interior. Only one speaker attached to a kind of fancy digital projector was playing music. And I was able to sit at a table that I hoped was far enough away from the speaker.
The larger problem had to do with how my Rode Wireless Go microphone and the GoPro built-in microphone handled these conditions. In a word, they handled the conditions poorly. I thought the Rode would be ideal, because it is designed to record your voice in the manner of a lavalier mic. Yet, based on what I’m hearing in the video clips during the editing, the Rode appeared to be purposely designed to record all the background noise and NOT my voice. The roar of the background noise is overwhelming. This might have something to do with the microphone settings in the G85. It has a very powerful preamp, I believe. And I think the audio levels were simply far too high. I had lowered them a lot. But I think I need to lower them much more in the future. So this problem might again have been my fault. I rarely if ever have recorded inside a busy coffee shop or restaurant on the Rode attached to the G85. I don’t have much experience with this, so there were ample opportunities for me to make mistakes, and I found a way to make them all.
The GoPro also performed poorly. I wanted to make the GoPro unobtrusive, so I did not put it inside the Ulanzi cage with the GoPro Mic Adapter and a lavalier mic. That rig is much larger and heavier. I decided to use just the GoPro itself without any cage at all and rely on the microphones that are built into the GoPro. The fact that I recorded audio with the GoPro saved me a lot more problems, as I will talk about in the next paragraph, but the GoPro also struggled with the loud ambient noise.
The final problem was, again, completely my fault. I had the Rode Wireless Go receiver clipped into the hot shoe mount on the GoPro. And then I had the cord plugged into the Rode and then into the microphone jack on the camera. I suppose I could spread the blame around for this next problem because the location of that microphone jack on the G85 is poor. It is located right beside the flip-out LCD screen, and the cord and the screen conflict with each other. It’s a constant fight to open and close the screen without it getting tangled up in the cord. And while I was busy recording at the table, I often needed to move the camera to different positions on its tripod. And when I did that, I accidentally tugged on or snagged the microphone cord, and I pulled it out of the jack just enough that it disconnected. There is no locking mechanism for this plug, and it does not click into place very firmly. It has a very loose connection into the G85, and it doesn’t take much to pull it out. The result is that at probably the most important moment of the whole video, I was recording no audio with the G85. That could have been a major disaster for the video as a whole. Luckily, it was reduced from a major disaster to just a disaster because at that moment, I just happened to be recording with the GoPro as well. I had no reason to be recording with the GoPro, since I was sitting at a table and drinking tea. From its position on my chest, it wouldn’t be recording any useful video. But since the GoPro was running, it recorded the audio that the G85 missed. It’s terrible audio and sounds awful, but at least it exists. And through much effort, I was able to sync the audio from the GoPro with the video from the G85.
Putting all of this together, the technical side of my MJ Coffee Flavor Hunter experience was challenging if not exhausting and frustrating. But the actual experience of being there, talking to the owners, drinking fancy French tea, and learning about their business was very good, and that almost made up for the tech nightmare. And much of that, I must admit, stemmed directly from having the GoPro on the chest harness underneath my shirt. That innovation made all the difference, because it freed me up to simply interact with the world and not worry about the camera. I didn’t have to hold the camera. I didn’t have to aim the camera. I didn’t have to even think about it. I simply spoke with the owners and ordered tea and coffee and enjoyed myself and let the GoPro record it all in the background. The audio isn’t great, that’s for sure. But it did record usable audio. And recording my conversations (in English) with the owners will probably make the video a much more enjoyable viewing experience than it otherwise would have been.
I’ve been thinking back to that experience, and I’m wondering what would have been a better approach for audio. I’ve come to dismiss any thought of using my Boya shotgun microphone. The audio it captures always seemed too thin and soft and quiet. However, perhaps a shotgun mic would have been a better choice inside that noisy cafe environment. It might have rejected the ambient sound in a way that the Rode did not. I’d like to test that theory at some point. It seems crazy that after all these years of shooting video, I’m still struggling with basic lessons like this.
I don’t need to talk much about the coffee shop itself, since all of that has been recorded for posterity in the video. But there were many things I enjoyed about the place. It has regular seating that you would expect: tables and chairs and benches and things like that. But it also has a bar or counter with a row of stools right at the coffee-preparing area. I love that, because you can sit there just like sitting at a deli counter and watch them prepare all the fancy drinks. You get a front row seat. And I’ve always felt comfortable sitting on those high stools at a counter. It’s more natural for me than sitting at regular tables on regular chairs.
I also enjoyed the presentation of the tea. I didn’t actually order the tea. I was talking to the owners about the tea as I was ordering my coffee. But somewhere in there, it appears that I placed an order by accident. And when I sat down at the table, the woman brought over what they call their French Tea Set. She had chosen a Marco Polo blend of tea from the Mariages Frere tea company for me. And this was served in an elegant and fun tea set from Turkey. This Turkish tea set consisted of a matching metal tray, a teapot, a metal teacup holder with a lid and a ceramic teacup inside and a smaller metal container containing two cookies. This tea set is difficult to describe. It was made of a kind of metal filigree. Very elaborate. And the small lids were shaped much like the domes of temples. The French Tea Set cost 150 baht and that included a dessert.
They import fancy yet affordable teas from a French company called Mariages Freres and from two British tea companies. And they had a tea-sampling display that I found very useful and fun at the same time. They put bits of each type of tea inside a plastic container with a lid. Each container was labelled with the name of the tea it contained. And customers can unscrew the lids, raise the containers to their nose and enjoy the aromas of each of the teas as they decide which one to order. I’m thinking now that those plastic containers could be improved. They worked just fine, but I think they were medical urine sample containers, and that might not be the best choice for an elegant tea sampling station. But they were functional.
I stayed there for quite a long time absorbing the atmosphere. I also got the chance to chat for a minute or two with a young woman from Texas. She was there with her laptop and all her gear. She appeared to be a regular at this place. She was seated there when I arrived, and she was still there when I left, hours later. I didn’t get her whole story, but she said that she was in Mae Sot working as a volunteer for organizations helping refugees from Myanmar. That is a growth industry in this area. In fact, as I was walking back to Phannu House, I spotted “Ed” sitting inside Mary Jane Salvador. I had met Ed a couple of times before. He’s a British guy that is also in Mae Sot working as a volunteer to assist refugees. I was thinking that it would be interesting to interview him for my YouTube channel. He even sent me a message the other day on WhatsApp asking if I would like to donate to his project or help fundraise in some way. I had a vague idea in the back of my mind that perhaps we could help each other. If I interviewed him, I would get some interesting content for my YouTube channel, and he would get exposure for his project. He wouldn’t get much exposure, to be honest, considering the small size of my YouTube audience, but something is better than nothing. However, I hesitated, because the foreigners that work with refugees tend to be very secretive about their work. Whether their concerns are justified or not, they say that they can’t talk about what they do or put anything on social media. Because of the situation in Myanmar and the sensitive nature of the situation and the involvement of the military and police and the border, it could put them or the refugees in danger, they say. I’ve come across this idea enough that I simply don’t ask. And I never did approach anyone for any kind of interview. I sat down with Ed at the restaurant, and we had a very interesting talk. And during the conversation he made it very clear that he couldn’t expose himself or his work or the people he works with on social media in any way. It’s a problem for him because apparently money is tight. And he needs money to continue his work. He needs donors. He needs to fundraise. But he can’t go public with any fundraising campaigns. He can’t go on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube.
The other big adventure of the day involved the second YouTube Premiere for my Sukhothai series of videos. I was pretty pleased with the first Premiere. And I had high hopes for this second one. After I got back from the coffee shop, I even sat down to record what I thought was a short introduction to the Premiere. YouTube allows for you to take another video on your YouTube channel and add it as an intro or trailer. It wasn’t 100% clear how to do this or even how it worked or what it would look like. And the only way to figure it out was to just do it and see the results. So I sat down in front of the camera and recorded about a minute of video. I was assuming that this intro would play right before the video itself. There would be the two-minute countdown. Then this intro would play. And then the video itself would start.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way at all. Rather than being used as an intro, the video clip I submitted was turned into a trailer. That’s how it works. Whenever anyone visited the Premiere announcement on my channel, this trailer would play automatically. Yet, I said things in the video based on the idea that the Premiere was going to start in just a few seconds. And that was completely wrong. But at least now I know how it works.
And the Premiere itself felt completely wrong. I’m still puzzling over some aspects of this, and I’ve figured a few things out. Basically, the video came across as boring to the point of being painful. It was clear as I watched this video with other people that the video was terrible. However, when I watched the video by myself earlier, I found it to be very good. I was actually excited about it and proud of it. Part of the problem, I realized, is that when I watched it alone, I was fully absorbed in what I was doing and saying in the video. But during the Premiere, most of my brain was occupied with the Live Chat and interacting with people. And the video was secondary, sort of playing off to the side. And whenever I became aware of it, it struck me as boring and confusing. I was embarrassed that all these people were watching me in the video rambling on about King Si Inthrathit and his three sons and about who became king next and what they did. And then I was just riding my scooter all over Old Sukhothai and tracking down where temple ruins were located, where the park entrance and ticket booth were located, where the city walls went, how the moats and walls were constructed, where the museum was located, and many other random things. I rode around to all these places, but I didn’t go into any of them or show any of them. And the point of view of the camera hardly ever changed. It was simply recording what was in front of the scooter as I rode around. And I think without the overall context of me trying to get my bearings, the events in the video made no sense at all. And to viewers, it must have appeared that I was just jumping from place to place without any connection between them or even reason to do so.
The experience of that Premiere was so bad that I found myself changing my mind and deciding NOT to present any more of the Sukhothai videos as Premieres. I wrote the other day that the very word premiere is loaded with meaning. It conveys an idea that this is a special event, and the video should match that in tone and scale. And while I was sitting there watching the video, I was intensely aware that it did not live up to those expectations. I think the video was perfectly fine as an excuse to attach a Live Chat window to it. But to call it a Premiere and raise expectations is a bit much. Plus, there is the confusing aspect of timing. I tried to be as clear as possible that these are old videos and I’m just posting them now as a special series. But most people never quite figure that out, and there is all this confusion about where I am and what I’m doing. It’s all a bit of a production, and I don’t know that it is worth it. Presenting these videos as Premieres might have been a poor choice.
However, just this morning, I watched the next video in the series. And it’s a simple video of me at the Orchid Hibiscus Guest House exploring the grounds, having breakfast, and then talking about my plans for the day. It’s pleasant enough. It doesn’t rise to the level of a Premiere. Nothing exciting happens. But I think it is a more enjoyable video than my last disastrous Premiere. And perhaps I could combine it with a second Premiere of my museum visit video to follow right after. I say that because those videos are quite short. The breakfast video is 20 minutes long. The museum video is 16 minutes long. I could combine those into the same evening as two Premieres that follow right after each other. I might do that. I started this series as Premieres. I might as well continue. But my enthusiasm for Premieres has dwindled quite a bit after last night’s awful experience.
I recently came across another travel vlog YouTube channel. It is also quite popular, and it features a young couple bopping around Asia. It’s called Joel Friend for some strange reason. Their approach is quite casual, and I think they are shooting with a GoPro, and they aren’t attempting to do anything fancy. Part of the popularity of their channel almost certainly comes from the fact that the woman, Emilia, is in her bikini top half the time. Even when she is nowhere near a beach or a pool or a waterfall, she is walking around in a bikini. She’s a very pretty and pleasant girl, so I have no problem with that. But it is a bit of a YouTube cheat.
Their most recent video is titled “The best spots to visit in Pai, Thailand,” and it consists of a whirlwind tour of all the standard sights: WWII Bridge; Bamboo Bridge; Pai Canyon; and a random hot spring and waterfall. The usual suspects. But even for a casual highlight video, it was almost shockingly empty of content. I guess I get sensitive to this issue because I’m aware of working really hard to make my videos informative. If nothing else, when you watch my video about the WWII bridge, you learn about its history and its significance. There is a point to the video. Joel Friend had one thing to say about the bridge. He said, “It looks really old. It’s made of metal.” And that’s the entire coverage of the Pai World War II Memorial Bridge. Even by YouTube standards, that’s pretty thin. And they showed next to nothing of the bamboo bridge or the Pai Canyon. I guess I just end up puzzled when a video like that ends up being super popular and praised by everyone while a highly detailed video with lots of background information is largely ignored. Ah, well.