Christmas reduced to a 4 minute imovie! Stop Action Movie Animation example!

I have heard that time passes for an individual in relationship to our size.  If you are a small child you need to nap more because the morning seems like eight or ten hours.  A grown adult, on the other hand, can go for 12 hours without sleep.  Christmas past is forgotten when you are young because it is such a long time between the holidays.  Grown-ups feel that gifts need to be purchased in January because "Christmas is just around the corner!"  No explanation...it is just the way it is!

I feel that acceleration of time mostly with my technology toys.  Things change so fast it is hard to keep up.  Year before last we started the tradition of taking pictures of our family adding one person at a time...we called it "Build a Hug!"  The lead up to the final photo was as fun to look at as the final picture.  The first year we even had to crop one grandchild in because he was not in the photo frame!  Sigh!

Final Xmas Video

2009

This year we set the computer up and videoed the whole process from beginning to end.  Little grandchildren passed out packages, each family member stepped into the middle of the floor to be the center of attention and then we all voted to rip open our present ALL AT THE SAME TIME!  We knew that we were going to be able to see the video over and over and watch different people with their prizes.  Then we took a video of the "Build a Hug", this year starting with my husband and I.

Below is a video my daughter-in-law put together of the family putting up their Christmas tree in their home in China.  In this case they set up their Mac laptop and let it run the whole time then edited out my son taking down the lights to rehang them and other oops incidents. 



We could have used a website SAM Animation (create stop action movies) if we had chosen to and the computer would have taken a picture every 10 seconds for the whole evening.  Either way the 3 hour party is reduced to about 4 minutes!  Here is a movie of Maddie making cookies using the SAM Animation application.  The video was posted on vimeo because You Tube is often blocked in China.  For me it is just a world blogophere reality check!!!


Maddie Makes a Cake from Andrew Torris on Vimeo.


I occasionally have trouble wrapping my mind around what we can do today if we own a computer.  The very fact that I am here talking to you out there in the blogosphere still gives me chills.

This grandma will go take a nap now...Christmas makes me feel like a child again!

Smile!

b