This Easter weekend, I got focused and finally got to work playing with digital video. (Being a graphic designer, I guess I felt the need to play with yet another medium, to avoid making it big in the ones I’ve already mastered.) For several years now I’ve wanted to experiment, and also to involve my kids, whose last association with videography was probably running around with their pants off on an 8mm tape; sorry guys. (And yes, that was looooong ago.)

Sidenote: It just occurred to me that this will probably make for a weak story, in that I’m not offering much technical insight for those as inexperienced as me, and I’m certainly not adding to the body of knowledge out there, in terms of making movies on the Mac. On top of that, [the 4th version of] my first video is kind of lame. But I may not be able to resist including it here, if only to ensure a thoroughly unjustified blog posting.

Oh – Now I remember the human interest angle! First, after reading a David Pogue review in the New York Times, I ordered a Flip Ultra (60 minute) camera from Amazon; I should receive it any day now. It is what it is…a fairly inexpensive plaything that I suspect will be a nice fit for my planned spontaneity(?!) Anyway, for the interim, I said , “Dang it, I’m going to put out the twenty bucks for QuickTime Pro software, so I can do some basic editing.” With that, I exhumed some vintage footage from my still camera (yes), buried deep in one of my half-dozen hard drives. The “reel” I chose was circa 2003, starring my two boys carving jack-o-lanterns in the kitchen.

Hang in there; it gets marginally better…

Yes…Well I’m not all that proud of this fact, but the real tipping-point motivation on this Movie Weekend was to embarrass my 18 year old son, with whom I have… let’s call it… a stressful relationship. With that guiding light, I cut up the footage with Quicktime Pro and put it into iMovie to lay down some audio tracks (I sound like I know what I’m doing, right?). I also saw it as a blessing that the original file, from my digital still camera (yes) was silent – no microphone on that puppy – and no ‘talking’ in the scene either, so no lip-syncing to deal with. I was totally free to besmirch whoever ended up appearing on this future classic.

Adding sound clips – and distorting them a bit – was fun, especially the mocking laughter near the end (at 20 seconds total, I suppose the whole thing is the end). Layered on that is my thoroughly slack-jawed, nasally and delightfully guttural voice, perhaps actually my sleeping voice. This also was my first chance to post a video online. I’m at least happy that my publicly-lost virginity with YouTube didn’t consist of me apologizing in front of a webcam saying “well, this is my first YouTube video…”

And there you have it. The nominations are in. May I have the envelope please. “…and the Father of the Year award goes to…”