Movie: Christmas 2001

Around Christmas time, 2001, I decided to use our miniDV camcorder to make a Christmas movie. I shot footage of Sherree & I decorating our Christmas tree, exchanging gifts with my family, exchanging gifts with Sherree's family, and Sherree & I together on Christmas morning.

I shot nearly 5 hours of footage by just setting the camcorder up and letting it run. On the computer I edited the raw footage down to a 9-minute movie, complete with music in the background, fades, a title and all kinds of other nifty effects.

Want to see Christmas 2001? (It now dawns on me that "A Holiday Oddyssey" would have been a great subtitle!) You can download it here: christmas2001.mpg; right-click and "Save As" if you want to download the movie to your computer. This is a 21MB 320x240, 15fps, 300kbps, MPEG-1 file.

Please excuse my poor cinematography skills. I did learn quite a lot about cinematography and my camcorder, though. I used a JVC DVR-90u miniDV camcorder to shoot all the footage.

• Autofocus is easily fooled--much easier than the autofocus of my 35mm or digital cameras. You see several areas where the focus is just wrong or bounces back and forth between subjects.
• The built-in mic really doesn't work all that well.
• It's a good thing that I used a tripod for 99% of the footage. The little bit I shot without the tripod is--in comparison--wildly bouncy.