See this film in High Definition (HD) on YouTube.

The music and dancing was loud, fun, and fast. Early in the evening it quickly became apparent that still photographs could not capture the moment.

During the celebrations and entertainment, I switched between filming and experimenting with various still settings on our point and shoot camera.

I came away with approximately 14 minutes of HD film footage, weighing in at 2.64 GB. The quality is acceptable given the lighting. The sound is terrible, but that should be expected; the camera’s microphone is mono.

Editing an HD film in iMovie on Mac OS X

The film was edited using iMovie. Films like this benefit from being short, closely cut, affairs. I had fun cutting and trimming footage. The process gave me a little insight into just how challenging a professional editor’s role can be.

Canon PowerShot SX200 IS

The camera is a Canon PowerShot SX200 IS. I can highly recommend this camera. It is small enough to carry around, not too expensive, and is capable of taking great shots.

To make our search easier, I cobbled together a map of civil celebrants in Australia, organised by state.

Maps showing Australian Civil Celebrants

The link above leads through to a mash-up of celebrant listings from the Australian Government’s web site and Google Maps. The data is frozen as of April 2009, but that should be recent enough to get you started.