They say pet owners adopt the characteristics of their pets, or maybe it’s the other way round. On The Busking Project we have no pets (there was Trevor the Tortoise for a few days but that is a different story), but we do spend far too much time with our filming equipment.

Our Zoom H4 (stereo microphone and external XLR recorder) takes rechargeable AA batteries. It certainly lives up to its name as it zooms from three bars to one and to a flashing low battery. But once it has reached this panic mode stage the little thing seems to last forever, like the rasping shuddering deaths of amateur dramatics. Then when the AAs finally die it’s a thirty-minute power charge to full health.

Now see Nick: most places we go someone will comment that he looks tired. Most of the time he is, but like our trusty Zoom H4 he flashes away on empty hour after hour. He worked on our trans-Siberian time-lapse after thirty-six hours of being awake, took a power nap, and woke up on three bars. The problem is his batteries were down to empty again in double time, and there’s always the worry they may cut out when we really don’t want them to and we’ll miss or lose something important.

The Canon DSLR is a different bowl of pudding – three strong white bars all day long and then two bars to flashing red and dead with a single performance. And it takes a long charge, usually overnight, to bring them back to green for go.

Now see Belle: after a good nights sleep, a coffee and a small amount (one hour – be warned) wake up time, Belle is a green light ready to go. We can film all day, interviews and photographs. But there comes a time when she crashes and she crashes quick. In India we went from an innocent search for a camera shop to carrying Belle into the nearest restaurant and forcing her to eat in the space of ten minutes. It was an energy slump of massive proportions. We have learnt to recognise the signs of her flashing red light and know her irises will soon be clicking shut.

At the beginning of the trip I thought Nick was crazy buying four batteries for our DSLR and six for our HM100, but I’ve noticed that our batteries don’t last as long as they did. They are feeling the strain of long and daily use. Now I’m not sure we have enough to survive the trip.

We recognised this in ourselves as well. Asia was hard. Returning to Europe a relief, but we were still tired. We scheduled ourselves a small amount of time to recharge. Nick in London and New York, Belle and I in Liverpool and Coulmbia, SC. Now we are ready again – North America, Cuba, and South America. Four more months of filming and we’re done.

Chris

ps. I’m not sure what kind of battery I most resemble, maybe Nick and Belle can tell me. I think that maybe I don’t have an external indicator, so I’m hard to gauge. One thing that is certain, as we keep level with the sunny season, I wish I were solar powered.