New Movie “Make ‘em Squirm - The Sharkbiter Way” Almost Ready

My new movie, Make ‘em Squirm - The Sharkbiter Way is almost ready to go. The project progressed well this week. I went through several revisions of the dialogue and action. Each time I needed to make fewer and fewer changes. That was a good sign. As a final touch, I added some music and titles.

For a while now, I’ve wondered if I really should do this film. It is not like what I’ve done in the past. I worried that maybe I went too far with the idea. I posted a preliminary version on-line and asked a few people review it. Two people got back to me so far and both thought it was good.

I did most of the work on the movie in Xtranormal Desktop, but I added the titles in Premiere Pro. Xtranormal takes a long time to render the movie: nearly two hours for a nine-minute movie. I had a couple minor changes I wanted to make near the beginning of the movie, but didn’t want to re-render the whole movie. Instead, I created a second, shorter, movie with just the section I wanted to change. Then I cut it into the movie.

The time it takes to render a movie is a problem. I have to redo the whole movie to see the effect of some minor changes. Maybe I need to get a newer, faster computer. I bought the one I have back in 2007, so it is almost five years old. Ancient in computer years.

Even with a faster computer, I think it makes sense to work on the movie in shorter chunks and then stitch them together. This movie is a single scene, but most movies have scenes that run two to three minutes. That is a more manageable piece of work.

I wanted to add a little music at the opening and closing of the film. I found a website where you can download music that is in the public domain http://www.musopen.org. I found a Bela Bartok piece, Roumanian Dance #1 that I liked. The site says that all the music is free to anyone who wants to use it, even if it is in a for profit movie. Bela Bartok’s music from this period are in the public domain. The person who performed and uploaded the music says that his recording is public domain as well. All the same, I want to contact him and make sure that he is OK with the way I used it. I haven’t managed to contact him yet.

Update 2012 May 31: The musician agreed to let me use his music.

I have a couple of other changes I want to make before I’m ready to release it. When I’m done, I’ll post it on YouTube. I've signed up for the revenue sharing program on YouTube. The Xtranormal licence allows that. If I want to sell it though, I need to get a commercial licence. That is fairly expensive, compared to what I’ve paid so far. I may do that when I think I can make the money back.

I should post the final version by the end of the week. If you would like to see the preliminary version and give me some feedback, please get in touch.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog