Five minutes of flea...

[WOM]

[Hot Pepsi]

Awesome

[Femme Folle]

Gosh, it's pretty out there.

[Sits]

Lovely stuff WOM, couldn’t quite make out if you had camo cargo shorts on.

Definitely smoother across the water since you made that tweak, in my expert opinion.

[treibeis]

I like the film - it's a North American film - but I think the Gnat could do with a clean. And you drive too fast.

And if a lifejacket is good enough for Burt Reynolds in Deliverance, then it ought to be good enough for you. Or were you wearing one?

[treibeis]

Oh, and the opening bit, where you're walking through the woods, is like a scene in a horror film that culminates in lakeside sunbathers being butchered by an axeman.

[Femme Folle]

And you drive too fast.

More like "Five minutes of flee", amirite?

[treibeis]

More like "Five minutes of flee", amirite?

Very good.

Maybe somebody who knows how to do these things can make a bloodier parody of it.

[Sits]

Oh, and the opening bit, where you're walking through the woods, is like a scene in a horror film that culminates in lakeside sunbathers being butchered by an axeman.

When we were teenagers we used to borrow my Dad’s Super 8 cine camera and try to make action/thriller movies. I may still have access to one on YouTube; our take on Raiders of the Lost Ark, made within a year or so of the movie coming out. A true classic.

Anyway I was fixated with getting a “tracking” shot like WOM’s after being very impressed by the “wolf’s eye view” shots in An American Werewolf in London. The pinnacle of my efforts was getting the camera into the bottom of a carrier bag with a hole for the lens, then walking quickly through some woods. Viewed back, it made everyone feel nauseated.

[ad hoc]

Do you ever get people complaining about the noise pollution? When I lived in Vermont the worst thing was going out in the forest on a snowy winter day, walking or snowshoeing or cross country skiing and some twat on a snowmobile would destroy the peace. Round here in the summer hiking in the mountains it's trail bikes or ATVs. Maybe the lake is different in that it might be very far from anywhere and the boat doesn't kind of knock people of the path in its noisy wake. Maybe kayakers might find it annoying. (I realise this question might come across as negative, and perhaps be somewhat revealing of my own attitudes, rather than being presented entirely neutrally, but it is a genuine question)

[Kevin S]

The title made me think of this...

[treibeis]

Do you ever get people complaining about the noise pollution?

WOM probably owns the lake and the surrounding woodlands.

[Sits]

God that’s tedious.

[WOM]

Cheers all. It's the first thing I've ever shot and edited (on iMovie), and it was fun. Yes, I'm absolutely wearing camo shorts, and always wearing a life jacket. I also have a second one laying across the gas tank to lean on. The smooth factor is like night and day since I put the trim tabs on. Oh, and I have a continuity error in that I shot one morning in a t shirt and later on wearing a blue fleece, but I'm not sure if that's noticeable. Yes, I defo go too fast...and will be going even faster if the propellor swap works out the way I intend.

As for noise, no, nobody seems bothered. It's a motor lake with ski boats, jet skis, runabouts, and two sea fleas (you can see me chasing my neighbour at one point). I get flagged down from the ends of docks a lot, but never for complaints. Mainly just to reminisce about when they built one back in the '50s / '60s / '70s, or when someone wants to know where to get a set of plans or how long it takes to build one, etc.

[WOM]

WOM probably owns the lake and the surrounding woodlands.

Oh, and the lake is owned in two parts. The part I'm on mostly is owned by cottagers, and then you see me go through some narrows marked by orange buoys and into another section. That half of the lake is owned by a really old summer camp for rich kids (see Horror Films or Bill Murray Movies type of thing). You can see it around 1:50 in the background. They do water skiing and whatnot, so aren't arsed about noise either.

[Nocturnal Submission]

God that’s tedious.

Having a pop at Treibeis now, I see.

What IS your problem!

[Sits]

Having a bit of trouble with my cross posts lately.

treibeis understands. He knows I’m completely harmless.

[treibeis]

treibeis understands. He knows I’m completely harmless.

The Richardsons used to claim to be "completely harmless", too.

[WOM]

Think of how their lives would have differed but for two sheets of plywood and an old outboard motor....

[DCI Harry Batt]

What is a sea flea, exactly, by definition?

[WOM]

Great question. And frankly, no idea. Broadly, the term applies to very small, home-built plywood boats made from a set of plans published in Popular Mechanics / Popular Science magazines in the 1950s. They were simple and cheap to build using common tools and readily available hardware, and were almost always created by a boat designer named William D. Jackson.

[DCI Harry Batt]

So you made it yourself?

When does it go on the sea?

[WOM]

I did, indeed. And it never goes on the sea. If the water is too rough, the nose can plow under the waves... and that makes you sad. Ideally you need a calmish lake or river.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Making your own boat really is taking the piss.

Needs a new name, if it's not designed for the sea.

[WOM]

Making your own boat really is taking the piss.

No idea what this means.