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Normally, I consider all the Apple technology around me to be helpful, time-saving, and generally a pleasure to use. My recent experience with making a movie for science was truly hellish. Here’s my story:

Wednesday, 3/17/05:

My science group of 6 or so decides that it would be cool to make a movie for our 5 minute in-class presentation. We brainstorm ideas and come up with an outline for the content of the movie. What a brilliant idea to make a movie! We are just sooo witty.

Thursday, 3/18/05:

One of my group members brings a camera and tripod and we start filming at my house. The tripod is really janky, so I have to go into my house and get my own. We got a lot of good filming done at lunch, but not enough to finish the project. So 4 of us decide to continue filming after school. We go to my house, continue filming, and pretty much finish the movie. But the battery is running dangerously low. We manage to import about half the content of the movie before the battery dies. But while importing the movie, there is a lot hiss from the sound cables that makes listening to the clips really annoying. We tinkered with the wires a bit, and we managed to reduce it to some extent.

So now we’re stuff with half a movie, and its around 5pm. Now what do we do? Use my iSight (web cam)! But because the cable is too short, we can’t really do much filming without it looking retarded. So we grab my laptop, plug in the camera, and move around. It works out great, and the video quality is even better than that of the original camera. So by 6pm or so, we have another copy complete copy of the movie ready to be edited. Satisfied, all my group members leave me to edit the film. Besides, we have a whole poster to do too! Parts of the movie are on my laptop, and the other parts on my G5. I plug in the Ethernet and transfer all the files over. But somehow along the way, the files become corrupted, and only the very first clip is intact. And that one cuts out 3/4 of the way through. I frantically spend the next half hour trying all sorts of recovery techniques, but the files are lost.

Shit. By now I’m so pissed off, I want nothing to do with the movie anymore. I quit working on it, get on AIM and inform one of my group members of our plight. We go over the possibility of scrapping the whole movie idea and just doing a normal presentation (why did we do the movie in the first place??). But he says I’m the only one who knows how bad the state of the movie is, and so I should decide. Not wanting to make this decision, I put it off . I spend half-an-hour aimlessly browsing the Internet, not really doing anything. Then I decide I should probably get back to work. So now what should I do? Grab my laptop, iSight, and all available hard disk space, and continue filming at 8pm or so. Now, with all my group members gone, there’s no one to hold the camera. So I do. Holding it as far as possible from my face, I begin talking into it and recording on the laptop. By 8:45pm I have a majority of it done, and I import the clips to my main computer to edit. It works this time (!), and I start editing. I have to film some more to fill in some gaps, but generally its all good. I finish the movie at 10:30pm. Done. Finished. Yay!

Not quite. I don’t have any blank DVDs, but its only a 5 minute movie. I decide to go with a CD masquerading as a DVD, via Roxio’s Toast software. Burning works fine, and I test the movie on my laptop to make sure. Phew, glad that’s over. Now I can START the rest of my homework. $#!@&*.

Friday, 3/19/05:

I go in to science class at lunch to test my movie and make sure it works. What? Our science classroom doesn’t have a DVD player?? (I knew that, but had to add it for dramatic effect). So I go around the school asking various teachers if they could kindly lend their DVD players to room 302. I get one, and plug it into the TV in the room. It sorta works. The video is fine, but the sound is like Tron at half speed. No good. We get a second DVD player, but this one refuses to even touch the CD (pretending to be a DVD) I’ve given it. My teacher suggests I go to my house, get my laptop, grab a projector from the library, and show it that way. Pfff. Well, I run down to my house, but then realize I can’t get in. I don’t have a key. Shit.

I dejectedly walk from my house back up to science class in time for it to officially start, knowing that our presentation will not happen that day. My teacher ever-so-kindly gives me an extension to the following Monday. Over the weekend, I buy some brand-spanking new DVDs, and burn a new copy. And just to be on the safe side, I test it on a real DVD player.

Monday, 3/22/05

I go into science class at lunch, just to be extra careful and make sure it works. I’ll bet you can guess what happened. It didn’t! Surprise! My solution is to run to my house (I’ve got a key this time!), grab my own DVD player which I tested it on, and bring that to science class. It works. Breathe, Andrew, Breathe. You’re done now. You can go home. Finally.

Well that’s it. The story of my science project. Basically, I spent 10-12 hours on what had to be a 5 minute presentation. Ahh, a beautiful life lesson!