We heart Dr. Julian Earls!

We had our second meeting with the center direction of GRC, Dr. Julian Earls, today, and it was great! He's great...yeah...

I was able to ask him some general questions about how NASA works and poke at some pesky political and economic issues, Kat got some good stuff on the possible psychological side effects of prolonged spaceflight, Moses got him to discuss her pet subject, and Chris tackled the emotional side of the search for life.

Dr. Earls' office was rad, too. So many trophies (ok, maybe they shouldn't be called trophies) on the walls, and he even had the jacket he wore for the Salt Lake City Olympics torch bearing ceremony framed on the wall (hall of fame style).

My second favorite part (besides Julian Earls himself) was when we did some ad-libbing afterwards...I definitely think we need to get some more free-form "us just being us" footage. I've actually got some of that planned for my segment so...stay tuned.

Afterwards we talked to Bob Azzardi about how to get our footage onto a computer. He told us that he loves Julian Earls, too! (Really, he said "I have to say it...I love Julian Earls!") Still don't have the editing/computer/cable thing figured out (or do we, Kat and Chris??), but hopefully we'll get that working soon.

All right, time for me to get some work done. It's been a busy morning.

Filming notes

Kat and I just had a very good filming session. We used the hangar "default position" and we tried a couple of places before we ended up settling on the left side in front of this concrete barrier thing. Kat was able to lean against it, thus be much more relaxed during her speaking. Hopefully we can all take a look at the footage soon.

I also learned that a tripod is ESSENTIAL! We might need to redo some of the footage I shot today with a tripod. So...hopefully we'll get one soon.

Also, everyone should really be trying their hardest to think of creative ways to illustrate the things about which you are talking. Today when Kat and I were filming we realized that just zooming in on her bio sensor while she explained how it worked wasn't going to be very visually engaging. So she's going to modify her diagrams so we can use them in the movie. Stuff like that is good, also any interactive things (like if you can come up with some kind of visual or physical analogue for what you're talking about, something we can play with and actually have fun filming) are awsome. Ok this is kind of a cheesy example, but...

I made this video about salmon in sixth grade. There was this one part where we wanted to show how hard it was for salmon to get over dams, even when they install fish ladders. So we had one person just run and leap. Then we said it was going to be harder than that. Then we had another person do a cartwheel. It's still going to be harder than that. Then we had my gymnast friend do a couple of crazy back handsprings. Yeah, it's even harder than that.

So...think visual, think exciting to look at...

That's my message for the day.

Good job on the presentation today everyone. We've definitely all done some good background resarch.

We all have filming filming that we want (well, need) to do, so should we work out some kind of filming schedule (in addition to the interview schedule)? Maybe each person comes up with a list of scenes are where they will need to film then and who will be in them. Then we can decide when we are going to film them.

Also...we need to start seriously arranging this Mars simulation. What's it going to be like? Where are we going to film it? What costumes or props (if any) do we need? How are we going to organize it? How long is it going to be? Stuff like that.

Or maybe I just got bitten by the organization bug...let me know what you guys think...

I've got the skills to pay the bills...

...or something. Anyway, I've been using some video editing software this week to make "movies" for my dust research. The software we have here is Adobe Premier (which I used a long time ago in high school in my fild and video class). So...I guess what I'm getting at is I'm kind of anxious to start the editing process, so maybe I could start editing the footage that we already have (at least into easy to find/use clips or something?).

Oooookay...