“Pete’s Plan”, “The Barrier”, and Various Distractions

I was disappointed to get another rejection of my short story “Pete’s Plan” this week. “The Barrier” is almost one-third done now. My various distractions may delay progress.

“Pete’s Plan”

I got another rejection for my science fiction short story “Pete’s Plan”. It took them 3 months to respond and, by the time I got the reply, I’d forgotten to whom I submitted the story. It was a disappointment and part of me wants to give up and post it on my website like my other stories. I still have a long list of places I can submit to though.

“The Barrier”

I got seven more scenes done on “The Barrier” this week. Most of them were quite short, so they only added about 9 minutes. In total, I have 27 minutes done.

I feel confident that the final film will be feature length when I’m done. I took a short break from creating scenes to plan the whole film a little better, so I know where I’m headed. I’ve done 17 scenes now and in all I have 58 scenes planned. My average scene so far is 1:35 and if I keep that average, the final film will be a little over 90 minutes.

When I edit them together, I’m sure to lose some time. Some of scenes are quite bare bones, so if I develop those further, then I should make up for the lost time.

My plan is to get all the scenes done and edited together. After I’ve had a look at how it works, I plan to do some clean up work and revisions. When I’m done that I’d like to release it as Version 0.9 and ask for feedback.

I find the story interesting, but I can’t be sure if anyone else will be willing to watch it all the way through. For a film to be successful, people would enjoy it enough to recommend it to others. Maybe that is too high a goal for now.

I picked up a few more tricks in Xtranormal. I’ve started to experiment with the smart camera feature. In several of my scenes, I have the characters move around the set. That makes it very difficult to set up camera angles because you have to watch the movie to see if you got it right. I think the smart camera may make that easier.

I may try the smart cameras on a couple of scenes I did already. After I watched them, I felt that I wanted to use different sets. I hesitated because redoing all the camera set-ups was such a pain. If this works, it may not be so bad.

Various Distractions

I would like to put more time into “The Barrier” to get it done, but it isn’t the only thing in my life these days.

Spring is finally here. With that comes allergy season. That tends to slow me down. I’m in itchy sneezy mode these days. With spring comes yard work and garden work. I do enjoy the yard and garden, but it does take up my time.

I just watched a video where the speaker says that you need to take time away from your thinking in order for you to keep you mind clear and focused  (http://fora.tv/2013/02/24/Maria_Konnikova_How_to_Think_Like_Sherlock_Holmes) So maybe it is good to have distractions.

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