A little while back a good friend gave me one of those 360 cameras when he upgraded to the newer model. Knowing my love of all things video he told me "I can't think of anyone who could take better advantage of this thing than you." I've had it now long enough to feel a little guilty that I don't lead a more active and exciting life. All the videos are guys on bikes jumpin over shit and hot chicks parasailing off a cliff, entire groups of people hiking up mountains. Who are these people? What am I gonna do, grab full 360 video of my Uber trip to Trader Joes? While I figure out how to make music with it, I've been on the lookout for something cool to do with it.
It so happens it is the season for the Perseid Meteor Shower. It happens every year and I have been making a point of watching it every year since I was a kid. I wrote a song about it. Wakitu and I have years and years of memories of camping out somewhere in the mountains to watch the stars fall. This year we own a cozy little spot in Wofford Heights on the mountain between Lake Isabella and Split Mountain. Our place is the last place before the gate up a lonely road. Above us are a sprinkling of homes on larger lots. Ours is just over an acre with a clear super-wide view of the sky for the show. One of the biggest skies or canvas, if you will, we've ever had. The campgrounds had the cool effect of the ring of trees and the oval canvas. This was not that, as you can see. We saw stars fall in every direction.
One of the features of the camera, an insta360 x2, is the "starlapse". So you set up the camera in a dark spot, set it for that and push go. You can plug in a brick charger and run it for 4-6 hours and it shoots a shot every three seconds. The interesting thing about it is it does not save all those photos, Rather, it makes a video of them and then you can edit it using the app. Cool, right? So that's what we did.
We brought good food and sleeping bags and we drove up for the weekend. It's a cool little spot for the most part. A singlewide on a sloped acre of oaks with an in-season seasonal creek you can hear at the bottom if you lean over the edge a little. It's quite warm currently, it being August and all, but the evenings were perfect. Not too hot, a cool breeze blowing south off of what is left of the snow on Split Mountain and a clear moonless sky for nature to play with.
The first night we took a nap to stay up late then overslept a little. We may have waited too long and missed some. So this one is short 'cause the sun came up too soon. We learned some stuff though - like don't put the camera on the white top of the camper. Also, we forgot about the gate light, we should have covered it up. It was just gorgeous out there in the back of the truck, feet pointed north, comfy in our shirtsleeves with our sleeping bags for padding and snuggle covers. So we giggled back there oohing and aahing for an hour and a half and left the camera running til the sun came up.
Having educated ourselves we slept all day through the heat and in the cool of the evening we made a better plan. We went out earlier, we threw a blanket over the gate light, and put the camera in front of the gate for the long view over Lake Isabella. It worked much better. You may have to watch this a few times to see all the meteors flying in all different directions. Look close anything not in one of those circles is a meteor and it looks just like a falling star. Make a wish!
We had so much fun seeing the stars fall and snugglin' under our sleeping bags. We were out there necking like teenagers at a drive-in. I got up and checked the camera at first light. I was so excited to find that I didn't screw it up. This next video is pretty much the raw footage from the second day but you can play with it in 3d. It's so cool! If you use your phone to watch it you can just move your phone around as if you were there.
You may have to watch the videos a few times to see all the stars fall, there were that many this year. If all else fails click through and watch them on your YouTube app. They look pretty cool on my 4k TV too.
