Watch our Christmas Lights video!

You may have seen our Christmas video "Putting up the Lights 2005" on HGTV's Over The Top Holiday show (airtimes). Now you can watch it over and over again! :)

Below the video, you can read more about it...

The Hoberer Family Christmas display video for 2005 in stunning stop-motion video. Now with music!

We have Christmas lights on the house and candy-cane-style lights on the front columns as well as the Winnie the Pooh characters in Holiday poses on the front lawn.

I hope you enjoy watching the video as much as we enjoyed making it. We took over 50 frames using our Kodak digital camera and then combined them in Windows Movie Maker to come up with the final product.

Happy Holidays!!!
The Hoberers
Darrell, Jen, and little Brendan
(and new for 2006: little Andy)


We had such a great time making this video! It occurred over about 5 hours as we put together our 2005 Christmas display from start to finish. We had our camera on a tripod near the street and every so often one of us would go over and take a shot. I'm so very pleased with the way that it turned out. Brendan was 2 1/2 at the time, and he really got a kick out of all the commotion.

I've watched the video at least 100 times, not counting all the times I checked it during editing, and it's amazing what you can see if you look closely. Here are some of my favorites:

Brendan's antics
* on the ladder (7 sec)
*head in the frame (13 sec)
* popping out the door (32 sec)
The first lighting of the characters
How the trees move in the wind
The footprints you can see in the grass
And of course, my giant leap at the end!

There are so many interesting things going on in this video that just happened by chance! If you've never made a video like this, just try it! It's pretty easy using Windows Movie Maker, which comes with Windows XP. You add a little title, a little music and *bam* you've got something cute to show family and friends. See more examples on YouTube.

One extraordinary thing about this display is that Jen and Grandpa Dobie hand-painted each and every one of the Winnie the Pooh characters over about 8 weeks before we put them up for display. They are made of white painted plywood, with the character projected and traced onto the surface. Then they hand-painted every bit of each one. They even added special touches like a real bow on Eeyore, real garland and ornaments on Tigger, and a real pie in Kanga's hands! OK, just kidding about the real pie, but wouldn't that have been Over The Top? Haha!

You can also see this on Google Video, where it has had over 7,200 views in the past year, and on YouTube.

I'd love your comments or questions. Drop me a line at DHoberer [at] nospamGmail dot com. You know what to do with the "nospam" .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Finally, here's a shout out to Kevin and Alex on Diggnation and Leo LaPorte, da Twit-Father. Love your shows, guys!)

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