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2006-09-06 - 7:19 p.m.

I stayed up all night AGAIN. I must say, that seems to be my preferred way to work. I've battled it all my life and have never been successful in beating it. One reason for that is that when I start a project, I can't stand to be interrupted. I want to just keep on working until it is finished. Also, I know that if I DO have to stop, it will be extremely difficult to get me back into it again; I will have just moved on to something else in my mind. So it's kind of an "all or nothing" deal. Maybe that second part is what I have to work on.

What was I doing? I wanted to burn a DVD of a day cruise I took on a restored World War II Merchant Marine ship, the S.S.Lane Victory, which is a nine-hour cruise from the Port of L.A. out to Catalina Island and back. I try to more-or-less video the various trips I go on, and then turn them into viewable DVDs, edited down to make sense, adding titles and subtitles to explain what is going on, and sometimes even put in appropriate background music. These are still in the realm of "home movies" instead of "more professional" works, in that my focus is more on enjoying the trip rather than documenting it properly. Upon making these DVDs afterwards, there are always things I wish I had filmed, such as in this case, "Why didn't I film inside the engine room?" (oh, that's right, it was too hot and humid down there and they wouldn't let us bring in anything, but I certainly could have shown inside their musems) or "Why didn't I show everybody eating the great meal we had?" (I was too busy eating.) But I also realize that in order to do that, I'd have to pretty much plan out every shot beforehand, which isn't easy to do if you don't know what all is going to happen. A documentary DVD is better done on a subsequent trip, perhaps taken especially for that purpose. Well, you know, that isn't likely to happen!

I had wanted to get this done, because I wanted to show it to my father, who I am going up to see in a couple of weeks for his 90th birthday. I had written before that "his mind is now back in World War II". He would have loved to have taken this cruise, but he doesn't ever leave the house, now. Still, he was very excited about my going on it and wanted to hear all about it. So I think his being able to see this DVD will be great...kind of a "second best" or "third best" alternative to actually going on the trip himself.

It came out pretty well, actually (given the limitations I mentioned); I'm pretty proud of it. I do these movies on an Apple i-Book, whose i-Movie can sometimes be frustrating (for some reason, working with audio is difficult and not quite satisfactory), but it's close to good enough for the kind of thing I am doing with it and the price sure is right, so no complaints. Actually, some of the things it does are incredible, so it's all good.

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