The Favorite Aunt

Over Christmas, I got to spend time with my best friends, who live in Seattle. Charlotte, their daughter, and I like to make goofy videos for YouTube. Photo Booth is great for taking “photo booth” style snap portraits, but in the latest version of Mac OS X (Leopard), Photo Booth can make videos as well as take pictures.

We tried some of the fun animated backdrops that come with it. We could have done a better job finding a blank wall to go behind us, so Photo Booth could have more accurately inserted the roller coaster and aquarium scenes.

But that did not diminish our fun! (And it kinda reminds me of some of those ’60s psychedelic videos…)

Aunt hack ratings:

Age group: 9-12
Duration of activity: 30 minutes
Cost: Photo Booth comes free with your Mac; iMovie is part of the $79 iLife ‘08 suite
Child/aunt fun ratio: 60/40

I composed the video using iMovie ‘08. A lot of people complained that this latest version of iMovie is a step backwards, including me. But then I heard Bob LeVitus of the Houston Chronicle speak. He said that he has cut in half the time it takes him to edit family videos! So I gave it a tryout, and sure enough, you can very quickly edit a little video project. And iMovie ‘08 seamlessly uploads your video to YouTube.

I have hours of video of the niece/nephews that I’ve never edited, because it used to be a minimum 2 hour project – and usually much longer. Now I can do nice short videos in a half hour, or less. This Photo Booth movie took 10 minutes to edit, add music and transitions, and upload to YouTube.

Somewhere there is a dividing line between quality and quantity. I’d rather edit more cute little movies of the kids with iMovie ‘08 than fewer videos that are more sophisticated. I’ll always use Final Cut for documentary filmmaking. But I’ve learned to love iMovie because it takes away the barrier to just getting the kid videos done.

If you want to do even more cool stuff with your iSight camera, check out Freak Show, a cool little piece of software developed by my friend Cosmo. It’s only $12.95, and it’s quite fun. Charlotte and I did a couple YouTube pieces with that last year.