Tiger Sniff Note: This article belongs to the Tiger Sniff series of articles, first published in the Tiger Sniff young content public account "Hard to Escape a Suck" (ID: huxiu4youth). "Big brain holes, making changes", we want to present the creative insights contained in young people's consumer goods, and the industrial and cultural phenomena they reflect.
Today, let's look at how a 24-year-old realized his 19-year-old brain hole. The cover video is a trailer for the documentary "Balloon Exploration".
Tim tied a 3-kilogram panoramic camera to a helium balloon and flew up to a height of 30,000 meters, recording an image of the appearance of the earth in near space with 8K resolution and 360 degrees of panorama.
He made the process of achieving this into a high-quality science and technology documentary - "Exploring Air Balloons".
Coincidentally, the Xiaomi Mi 10 released on February 13 also flew into space and took a series of photos of "100 million pixels shooting the earth". The difference is that the Xiaomi Mi 10 is equipped with a rocket, while Tim uses a high-altitude helium balloon.
Tie the camera to the balloon, slowly rise from the white snow field, and fly to a height of 30,000 meters to overlook the gorgeous earth. These romantic images, combined, validate Tim's expectations five years ago.
Five years ago, Tim thought things would be simple, and that summer would be enough. After consulting the meteorology professor of Zhejiang University, it was found that it was difficult to apply for approval, and it was necessary to have funds, to have people who knew, and to get airspace permits before they could fly.
On March 22, 2015, tim, 19, told the camera about this expectation, when there was no money and no corresponding person to achieve it with him. At the end of the video, he crosses his hands on his chest, bows his head, and thinks thoughtfully: "There are still many difficulties to face. ”
"But," he looked up into the camera, "it will work." He raised his thumb and smiled like a child, shy and determined.
Five years later, Tim put on the One Piece T-shirt he wore on video recordings five years ago and told us a story about making dreams come true.
During the entire implementation of "Exploring Air Balloons", the panoramic camera was provided by insta360; the special gimbal was developed by Good Friend Dongdong; the airspace approval and balloon, tracking and positioning technology support was provided by the Institute of Aerospace Information of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and the B Station Star Program also provided sponsorship.
"I thought no one was going to come and help me with this unreliable thing, but everyone I asked for help nodded at me." Tim said.
The panoramic camera weighing 3 kilograms is lifted into the air, starting from Inner Mongolia, where the ground temperature is minus 20 degrees Celsius, rising to a height of minus 60 to 70 degrees Celsius, maintaining the operation of the camera at the same time, real-time tracking and positioning, technical difficulties.
At low temperatures, the heat of the whole person is continuously sucked away, and with the strong wind, the body will be quickly frozen. The equipment also had problems, outdoors, the team's Sony A7 II camera lost 90% of the electricity every minute of booting, and the batteries and displays of other cameras also had problems. RED's black balance is also affected by low temperatures, with a lot of abnormal noise. In the end, the team decided to put the equipment on the edge of the generator to heat up, and only then did the black balance correction.
The low temperature at high altitude also makes it very difficult for the camera to operate. The Insta360 offers a special camera that does not turn the fan and accumulates heat in a way that does not dissipate heat to offset the cold of minus 60 degrees Celsius at high altitude.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in the technical difficulties, and the rest is not pressed.
On December 21st, the winter solstice, at three o'clock in the morning, on the dark snowfield, the jeep drove to the release point with all the members of the team, equipment and hope. After several rounds of testing, at 7 o'clock, the balloon was released. The balloon slowly rose, and everyone stared at the balloon with their heads up.
The sky was dark, and the horizon was shining with clear light. The dream looks so beautiful.
When the balloon flew to 4,000 meters, iridium data was lost and the signal suddenly stopped. Balloon data shows that the equipment is still rising, but when the balloon is disconnected, the positioning will be completely lost. That is to say, when the panoramic camera lands on the ground, there is no positioning data, and finding it is like finding a needle in a haystack.
A few hours passed, and the scheduled time for the equipment to land was reached. The team decided to delineate an approximate range of landing points based on the location data of the balloon when the line was broken, and conducted a manual search. The weather was good that day, and everyone was optimistic that they would find it.
"Let's go after the balloons." Tim smiled at the camera and said, "Let's be the star chasers." ”
When the video went on here, there were people in the bullet screen who "had a sour nose" and "goosebumps were up", and someone in the bullet screen began to brush: Let's go to the stars. Let's be the ones who chase the stars. Let's be the ones who chase the stars. Let's be the ones who chase the stars. Let's be the ones who chase the stars. Let's be the star chasers...
After arriving at the estimated landing point, each person is responsible for searching an area of 7-8 kilometers long and 600 meters wide, with an area of about 4.2 square kilometers, about the size of 3900 standard football fields. Everyone ran and searched in the thick snow on 3,900 standard soccer fields. Hours passed, it was dark and there was no triumphant whistle on the pitch.
The next day, john and Yingshi, two of the team's friends, stayed in the village of Sanjiejing, where they were staying, and asked the villagers for help to find balloons together. They called the kind uncles and aunts "Hurricane Support Groups." Unfortunately, with the full help of the support group, there is still no news.
Activate Plan Two.
The second load was unprecedented, and they added several more layers of insurance. In order to obtain one more positioning data, the iPhone connected to the charging treasure was tied to the top of the device, and in order to avoid the iPhone being frozen by low temperature, it was also wrapped with a warm baby.
Tim had some nervousness when he released the No. 2 payload. The team prepared a total of two sets of equipment, and if there is another accident this time, everything will be lost. Even if you want to start all over again, because of the approval reasons, it will at least be the summer of the following year. Tim thought that if he did fail, he intended to bear all the financial losses himself, because "the team can't pay for it."
The team affectionately turned the spherical panoramic camera into a small broken ball. In the unspoken nervousness of everyone and the visible expectations of the naked eye, the second small breaker took off.
2000 meters, 3000 meters, 4000 meters... Until 30,000 meters above sea level, the data was showing normally, and this time, they succeeded.
Landed. Iridium positioning is still there, iPhone positioning is also there, and they are driving to the landing point. In the car, Tim could not suppress his happiness, waving his fist and shouting expectation, and the colleague sitting on the right whimpered: "Don't hammer my leg!" ”
"See!" Everyone got out of the car and began to run wildly, even the old brother of the Chinese Academy of Sciences followed. Their backs form a nice slow motion, and like all youth films, the soundtrack is just right and annoying.
Lifting the little broken ball, everyone was screaming "Aaaah", extremely excited. Tim rolled happily in the snow, and Dong Dong shouted excitedly, "The stabilizer I made is still working!" Cow x! “
Tim straightened his back and raised his arms to face the sky. The harsh sunlight spread out from above his head, as if with a click, new dreams would burst out of the ice cracks.
That's the story of Air Balloons.
Five years ago, 19-year-old Tim smiled shyly into the camera.
Five years later, the 24-year-old Tim has graduated from the film department of the University of Kent, filmed videos for 7 years, returned to China to open his own company film and television hurricane, has 1.09 million fans in station B, and was selected into the list of the top 100 ups of station B in 2019.
He is probably the kind of young man that the elders most admire, full of innocence, vitality, good at learning and consulting, well versed in improving himself to produce resource replacement value for others, self-motivated and frank.
The real starting point for the air balloon project was November 2019, and the first five years were actually Tim's process of accumulating resources. Once, Tim was afraid of bothering others, unwilling to open his mouth to ask and try, and then he realized that this is a process of resource replacement, and he can better get help by thinking more about what he can provide for others.
In his freshman year, Tim loved Kai W, the world's most subscribed camera review blogger. He continued to email Kai W saying he had a lot of expensive equipment and was willing to work for him for free, and then worked for Kai W for three years.
In the process, Tim gained a lot of resources, came into contact with many famous directors and people, and later had his own channel, and the channel also had an explosive increase in attention because of Kai W's recommendation.
"And his pure English accent has also helped me a lot in my spoken language correction!" Tim came up with a cold sentence that made me laugh.
After becoming obsessed with editing, Tim underwent more than two years of intensive self-study, which was his hardest period of time, and every day was nothing but eating and learning. He didn't have the money at the time, from special effects to shooting, from color grading to scripts, all learned from free tutorials on the Internet.
"It sparked my interest in video production and what makes me who I am today."
Therefore, he and his team produced a full set of editing tutorials for Leonardo da Vinci, spent more than half a year studying the pain points of the tutorials on the market, looking for the best way to present, and wrote tens of thousands of words in the manuscript alone.
In order to solve the problem that the knowledge points of the long video are scattered and it is not easy to find review, a progress bar has been added to the left side
And the price of this set of tutorials is - free. Their vision is to provide a stronger experience and higher intensity and high-density knowledge than paid tutorials on a free basis. The knowledge gained that year, as well as the spirit of selfless sharing by Internet people, he wanted to pass it on without reservation.
As soon as the first episode of the tutorial was released, the bullet screen cheered: "This tutorial is also too exquisite!" "Don't you really think about collecting money?" Within eight hours, the 3,000-person exchange group had been filled with 4.
Not living up to the good family situation, diligent and studious, in his early twenties want to give back to the society, Tim is like a sample of "other people's children", is a particularly good rich second generation, peers not only hate it, but also can't help but appreciate it.
Tim says bluntly that he doesn't want to portray personal heroism. His parents, girlfriends, and various friends and teachers he met in life and work have all provided him with great help, and it is all this combined with his own efforts that has created him. As he said in the documentary, he originally thought that realizing his dreams was a matter of one person, but the moment he ran to the camera, he was most touched by the fact that there were people running with him.
In 2020, the idea he wants to realize is to look for the white-tipped dolphin. The white-tipped dolphin has been identified by the scientific community as "functional extinction", and the last time humans found a white-tipped dolphin in the wild was in 2004, when a stranded white-tipped dolphin carcass was found in the Nanjing section of the Yangtze River.
But in some watersheds, there have been occasional reports of sightings of wild white-tipped dolphins. Tim has been doing preliminary research, hoping to photograph functionally extinct animals like white-tipped dolphins, leaving the final images of them that once existed on Earth.
He also wanted to go free diving around the blue whale and record his smallness as a human being in the face of the largest creature that had ever existed in history.
After talking about the past, present, and future, This is where Tim's story ends.
By the way, if you find a small broken ball in Inner Mongolia in the spring, remember to tell him.
The measured load landing position is in Baotou or Bayannur, and the longitude and latitude table is on the map
Quick Q&A:
Q: Recently observed interesting views/products/videos?
A: Paper clip, Wizard Finance.
Q: Favorite startup?
A: Tesla, although he fell into the sea yesterday (referring to the successful launch of the Tesla Starlink satellite on February 17, but the rocket recovery failed
）。 SpaceX, rocket launches I watch every game.
Q: If there are no restrictions, what kind of brain hole do you most want to open?
A: Sell stinky tofu. Low cost, high production efficiency, very promising. On Alibaba, 1,000 pieces of black stinky tofu only sell for 20 yuan, and 7 pieces of stinky tofu on the food street sell for 25 yuan. (Happily reciting the lyrics of selling stinky tofu on the street)
Q: What are you doing twenty years from now?
A: Take a video on Mars. I want to die on another planet, more romantic. cruel.
Q: Predict the next world-changing brain hole?
A：SpaceX