Now a yearly tradition—check out my other videos here.

Date: November 23rd, 2008

Starring Misty the Stuffed Cat, a close friend from when I was little, and Shelley the Turtle (get it?) who came all the way from Brazil a few years ago.

Pictures taken every 7 seconds. Sequenced at 7-10fps. Encoded at 30fps.

Number of pictures taken: 1,100 (55 discarded)
Number of times the camera needed fresh batteries: 3
Number of light strings on this year's tree: 6
Number of hours spent planning the lighting: 2
Number of hours spent shooting: 5
Number of hours spent editing and fighting with weird compression and colour problems: 5
Number of days that I was sore after making this movie: 3

Music: Shortened Days by Something Completely Different

My stuffed toys get more exercise than I do. Can you tell?

You might think that having a smaller living room would make the task of lighting easier, but it was actually much more difficult. You have less space to put lighting fixtures, forcing you to put the lights in parallel with the camera and leaving you with shadows everywhere. Argh! I used six lamps in total.

Shelley walks sideways in some shots. Some of her grandparents must have been crabs.

As with other time-lapse movies, watching the movie over and over while concentrating on just one thing (lights, Shelley, shadows) is a fun waste of time. :)

To watch the movie in slow motion without QuickTime Player, hold down the Control key while clicking on the two arrows in the bottom right-hand corner of the movie area. Nudge the control slightly off-center/to the right. (Alternate method: download the movie, play it with VLC and use Command- or Control-+/-.)

Universal Law #33,479: No matter how much rearranging you do, Christmas tree lights are never evenly spaced enough.

The first block of original photos were a little dark, so I brightened them. Then the super high-quality, super-slow H.264 compression further brightened things to the point of giving everything a washed out look. Who said having the latest tools makes things easier?

Editing was done with QuickTime Player. The job would have been much easier with Final Cut, but photos-as-movies lose about half their resolution as soon as they enter Final Cut. (Compare the 2006 movie and 2007 movie and see if you can spot the difference in sharpness and detail.) I'm sure there's a good reason for this, but I couldn't find a quick answer or workaround.

By my count, unfurling the branches on our tree takes about 5 minutes, tops. Mom seems to think that proper unfurling can't be done in any less than half an hour, a theory that she happily applies to many other boring chores. :-)

With any luck I'll be moving out next year, so this may be the last movie for a while. :-(