“The Barrier” Progress Report 2013 April 28

Progress

I finished another four scenes and started on a fifth for “The Barrier” this week. They run about seven minutes, which is about what I did the week before. I rejigged several of the earlier scenes. Total run time is about 18 minutes now. There is some overlap between scenes, so it will end up a bit shorter. The average scene length was 1:48.

The new scenes were all for the second sequence. I took the first two scenes from “The Glencoe Project”. I needed to create the next two scenes to tie them into the story line from “The Gladstone Barrier”.

Challenges

When I decided to combine the two stories, I knew I would have some trouble when I combined the hero’s boss character. I had two different characters play that role in the two stories. This week I ran onto some scenes where the character from one story does something that the character from the other story wouldn’t. I haven’t really carved the characters in stone yet, so maybe I can use the contradictions to build a more complicated character.

I find that some of my characters develop more complexity as I work on the story. I think that when I work in Xtranormal that it is easier for me to develop the characters when I write.

I worry that some of the later scenes aren’t as visually interesting as the earlier ones. Maybe that will come later. I think that part of the issue is that I’ve had more time to think about the earlier scenes before I started on this project. I haven’t thought as much about the later scenes. I haven’t read the stories for a while and I realised that I don’t remember them as well as I thought I did. I think I had better reread them.

I’d like to tie the two stories together a bit better. “The Glencoe Project” is about the transportation study for a new development, while “The Gladstone Barrier” is about transportation project priority study. Some of the same characters showed up in the two stories. I originally thought the two stories were at different points in the hero’s career. Now I have them happen at the same time. In one story, the hero is inexperience, while in the other he is more experienced.

Xtranormal Tricks

I picked up some new tricks with Xtranormal this week. I used the ability to change character’s posture used very effectively in one of the scenes I did this week. Xtranormal has two different sitting postures, a sit up straight, and a lean forward. In the scene, my character talks about how discouraged he feels. I combined the lean forward with a look at a target on the floor to create a body language to express this emotion.

I learned how to make sitting characters stand up and used that in a couple of scenes. I tried to get a character to sit down. That worked in a test I did, but I couldn’t get it to work in the scene where I wanted to use it. I redid the dialogue to explain why he doesn’t sit down.

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First Sequence Done on Transportation Movie

I made more progress on my transportation movie this week. I did four scenes this week and edited them together with the two scenes I did last week. It came in at just under 10 minutes.

I finished the scene I gave up on last week. It is the scene where the boss, Brandon, assigns the hero, Arthur Macdonald, to do a development impact study. Most of it came from a scene in “The Glencoe Project”. It turned out to be trickier than I expected to combine it with the previous scene.

Two of the new scenes are directly from “The Glencoe Project”. In the first scene, Arthur asks the model guy, Dennis, for help. In the second, Dennis gives his advice. I did have to change the location of one scene so I wouldn’t need to buy another set. I also added some material to the dialogue. I’ll need to add some more, because when I watched the compilation, I realized that Ralph asks for something in one scene, but in the next, Dennis doesn’t answer the original question.

I added the last scene to provide a break between the two scenes with Dennis. In it, Arthur talks to his mentor, Ling. I used some dialogue that I had to cut out of an earlier scene because I had eliminated one of the characters. That didn’t make for much of a scene, so I added some more material that tells us more about Ling.

I changed my mind about the voices I wanted to use for the characters. I gave the boss, Brandon, the voice I’d originally used for Arthur because it seemed too authoritative for Arthur  I gave Arthur a meeker voice, which I hadn’t used before. I didn’t like the voice I gave Brandon originally. I found it hard to understand.

Finally, I used Premiere Pro to combine all six scenes together in a sequence. Most of the scenes run about a minute and a half, although one dies run over two minutes. Altogether the sequence runs for just under 10 minutes. I watched it through several times. I thought it went fairly well. I am too close to it to really judge it. I worry that other people will find it boring. I did notice some continuity errors I need to fix.

I had a nice transition between the first and second scenes that can symbolize one of the main conflicts in the story. It wasn’t something I had planned in advance. Now that I see how it works, I can go back and enhance the effect.

Over the next week I plan to work on the next sequence. I think the bulk of that sequence will be taken up by a single scene. I find that scenes of one and a half to two minutes are easier to do than the longer scenes. I may want to find a way to break up the scene. In this sequence, Ralph has a major set back, but then an opportunity opens up for him.

As I do each scene, I find I have started to develop better ways to create a scene. Initially I did the dialogue, camera setups, movements, and gestures as I went along. Now I start with just the dialogue, with a single camera set up that shows all the action. Most of my scenes start with some character movement, so I usually do that at the same time. Once I am happy with the dialogue, I go back and do the camera setups. I find the camera setups very frustrating to do. I add the gestures last. Of course, once I have the whole scene done, I go back and tweak it, again and again and again.

So far I have just called it my transportation movie. Initially I planned to call it “The Gladstone Barrier”. Since I used that title for one of my short stories, I wanted something different for the movie. My current inclination is to call it “The Barrier”. I think it give a broader interpretation of the story, since there is both a real barrier and a metaphorical barrier in the story.

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

Transportation Movie on Xtranormal Started

I started to develop a new video on Xtranormal this week. I would like to end up with a feature length movie, but we’ll see how it develops.

I planned to cannibalize my two stories “The Gladstone Barrier” and “The Glencoe Project” for the project. I’ve only taken some of the ideas from the stories so far. I haven’t used any material directly. Partly because I have some characters in different roles in each story, so I have to do some mixing and matching to make them work together.

The approach I’ve taken is to put together individual scenes, then later combine them into the whole movie. I’ve worked on three scenes so far, and I consider one of them finished. It is a new scene that has no counterpart in either of the stories. It does set up some new conflicts for the rest of the movie.

I’m mostly done the second, but think I can develop it a bit more. It replaces a scene in the original story that I couldn’t do in Xtranormal. Instead of showing the action, I have the characters talk about it. It isn’t as good that way, but I have to work with the limitations of the program.

The third is a continuation of the second scene, except that I bring in a new character and one of the others leaves. I haven’t been very successful with that one. I’ve scrapped what I’ve done so far and will start over. It is one of the scenes where I needed to change one of characters from the story. I can use most of the material from the story for this scene. 

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

Putting “Sweat Box” on the Back Burner

I’ve been stuck on my story “Sweat Box” for several months now. I’ve found that when I pick one top priority, then I tend to neglect everything else. Focus is a good thing, but sometimes it just gets in the way.

For the past couple months my top priority has been my wife’s health. While I’ve focussed on my wife’s health, I know that I need to take a break and take care of myself. Unfortunately, my top writing priority, “Sweat Box” takes a lot out of me.

I’ve grown frustrated with the project and can’t move forward with it. That isn’t what I need now. I don’t really like to drop projects, but I know I have to put “Sweat Box” off to the side for now. Aside from some concerns about the story itself, I just don’t feel excited by the story now. Maybe after I’ve left for a while I can come back to it with renewed vigour.

I have several other projects that I want to work on. I have ideas about how to finish off “My Most Difficult Case”. I want to try more short and long films with Xtranormal. I’ll have to pick one that gets me excited though. Maybe I should just go with the first impulse I have when I get up tomorrow.

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