In preparation for shooting "Cat in a Hat" I probably should have given my cat magic sleepy potion, since she jumped and hopped around like a maniac. (You can read about the shoot here.) However, I immediately saw the speed potential, and by that, I realized how comical it would look in fast motion.

For the shoot, I really had two things going on: I was acting as photographer (of the cat) and videographer (filming it). My problem: how do I document that?

Well, I own a second smaller video camera, and I used it to film myself filming myself.

The screenshot to the left is the smaller camera's view. I am talking into my main camera and standing in front of a painting in my living room. (You can see any screenshot in full size by right/control clicking it.) The screenshot on the right is the same view as seen via the main camera.

My goal in this shoot and video is to show how to set up a basic photoshoot for a cat, dog, or even a person using things you can pretty much find in your house. To that end, I kept the video running the entire time I set the shoot up to show how I did it.

Since I was running around the entire time, I did not use a handheld microphone and instead opted to have my shotgun mic pick up all the sound in the room. Later when editing the video, I used all the sound from my main camera and muted all the sound in the secondary camera.

Because I knew I'd be syncing up the sound on a second camera, it was imperative to keep both cameras running the entire time. That way, I could sync up one spot (I clapped my hands before I started) and know with certianty that my lips would be moving in time with my voice regardless of which angle I was showing at the time.

Although I had mapped out where the cameras were going to be before the shoot began, I discovered that the room wasn't quite as wide as I thought and so I wouldn't be able to get the view I wanted unless I moved it somewhere else.

I actually propped the main camera halfway up on my coffee table and put it behind me while I took some shots. The perspective is actually great: you can see me behind my still camera snapping away while my assistant, Jenny, played with the (annoyed) cat.

Because I decided to go "funny", I listened to quite a lot of Kevin MacLeod's music before deciding on one of his Silent Movie Scores, Plucky Daisy. It fit perfectly with my cat's antics.

Speed can be used effectively in movies, usually for the dramatic effect: the hero dives for the girl (slow motion); the bad guy gets blown up (sped up); the main character sees his dog about to eat his slippers (slow motion with added slow sound as he says "noooooo!"); special effects science fiction movies (slow motion as the hero dodges bullets).

Most of the time, you really shouldn't notice how the speed of the film is changing. The effect should be subtle yet compelling for whatever reason it is being used.

However, there is always an exception. In my case, I sped it up so much we're flapping around like clowns... which, of course, was what I had in mind.

When adjusting speed you can either chop your video into pieces and then adjust it one piece at a time (the speed will just suddenly JUMP) or you can keyframe a section to have it slowly decelerate/accelerate.

Since I was going for comedy, I used the first option.

In the sections where Jenny and I are setting up the table and the cats are jumping all over the sheet we were trying to hang, I put it at 400%.

You read that correctly: four hundred percent. The result is an obvious zipping, bouncing, and ridiculous looking section.  You can see this done quite a bit in video where you can see, say, houses being built or flowers growing. (They'd be sped up way more, actually!)

The remaining sections of video are only at 200%, which is obviously "fast" but in a choppy dumb looking way that fits the music and makes the cat look even funnier. I used one regular speed section to match the music for about four seconds, and then ZIP! off it goes again.

Since this was essentially documenting a photoshoot, I also included some of the pictures I took (all of which can be seen on my Flickr stream here). The problem with going from moving video to stills is that it's.... still. It's jarring if you leave it like that.

Therefore, I used an obvious transition (the turning cube) and then actually moved across the image itself á la the Ken Burns Effect. In iMovie, there is a nifty built in feature where you just click and tell it where to zoom in and out, but in Final Cut it's not quite so easy. I keyframed each image to adjust the scale and center position, and ta-dah! same thing in about the same amount of time. Keyframing individual parameters on video is something that really makes me wish I had a screen the size of Texas to play with.

When it was all done I had a four minute, twenty-nine second video. I exported it from the program into .m4v, which is a small file type that looks really good. Since standard definition video can look really terrible when compressed (the interlacing and scaling is the culprit) I am quite pleased with this format in general.

Because I made this video for my own person project, I did NOT include production credits at the end, as I do most of my pieces. Since I was acting as producer, director, cinematographer, editor, and host, I figured eyes might cross trying to read it all :)

However, I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to Jenny Arcenas, for all her hard work trying to get my cat to be even more cute.

ENJOY!