"The Barrier" - On to Version 0.3

Last Sunday after I posted to my blog, my wife and I watched "The Barrier". She said she liked it, but thought it was a little slow in places. She said that the main character reminded her of me. Most of the characters are based on me.

I took that as the sign to go ahead, so I began to work on the next version 0.3. The first step was to make a list of changes I want to make. There were still some video issues I wanted to fix, but the bulk of the changes involve sound effects.

I fixed a small video glitch that I missed earlier. I only noticed one while we watched. some video problems I'd noticed. I also spotted a scene where I forgot to composite in some computer screens. I got that done.

I did a couple of experiments to speed up the pace of the movie a bit.

In the first experiment, I sped up some shots of people walking. I can only do that in shots where no one talks, which means there are only a few places I can do it. I found that I could speed it up a bit without it looking comical.

In the second experiment, I trimmed some of the pauses between speakers. I did this in a scene where one character repeatedly interrupts another. I overlapped the dialogue there. I thought that turned out OK, but I will have another look at it before I do it elsewhere.

The main thing I want to do in version 0.3 is add sound effects. To start, I created a back ground ambiance sound file to use in the office scenes. I have phones ringing, people talking, Xerox machines, doors opening and closing, and I added in a couple of coughs. I did the coughs myself. When I recorded them, Myreil got worried about me and asked if I was OK.

I plan to post the full length video to YouTube. Normally you have a 15 minute limit, but I thought they had raised mine. I checked that and I don't have a limit to the length of my videos.

There are some other problems I'd like to fix, but I can't make them unless I redo the whole movie in another system. Mostly they are problems with the technical details of the work the transportation planners do. Transportation planners would pick up on them, but others wouldn't. They are really a Mcguffin, so I'm not too concerned about it now

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

"The Barrier" Version 0.2 Done

I got version 0.2 of "The Barrier" done this week. This version runs 87 minutes. That was about a minute longer that the previous  version. I cleaned up some more video glitches and added some sound effects.

The full version of the movie took a long time to out put, and I had to leave it overnight. The final run time was something like 18 hours.

After it had run I did an investigation to see if there was a way to speed it up. It turned out that the default power settings were for a laptop on batteries. The computer would go to sleep after about 20 minutes. When it was sleeping, the program ran very slowly or maybe not at all. I changed the settings, so it won't do that anymore. I haven't retried the same output, but I think the problem is solved. It does seem to let the programs run faster.

My plan was not to do anything about the sound track for this version. However, there were a couple of places where it is hard to understand what was going on, so I did those. I did a few other sound effects at the same time.

I found and fixed some more video glitches. When I watch the movie again, I won't be too surprised if I find a few more. I found one scene where I hadn't put in the computer scenes. I must have missed that when I went through the scenes earlier.

The next stage is to show the movie to my wife. We sat down to watch it the other day, but she hadn't realized that it ran an hour and a half. She thought it was like most of movies and was only 3 or 4 minutes long. She said she'd have time to watch Sunday. If she likes it I'll move on to the next version.

I've noticed some problems with the movie that I can't fix unless I redo it from scratch on a replacement for Xtranormal. I had planned to post the movie as a work in progress, but it looks like I won't be able to develop it as far as I would have liked. That said, I do think I should have a watchable movie.

I want to do a blog where I talk about what I'd like to change with the version I post.

I believe that this will be the first movie ever made where transportation planning is an important part of the story, and not just an interesting detail of one character.

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

"The Barrier" Version 0.2 Almost Done

Work on "The Barrier" went fairly smoothly this week.

I finished adding the computer screens to the scenes that needed them. That took much of the time. I had to go back and create some more screen images.

There were a bunch of other scenes where I fixed some video glitches. I'm not sure what caused them, because not all of the scenes had them and a few had more than one. In all but one case, there was just a single frame that was messed up. In the other case there were two frames. That made it easier to fix. I just copied the frame after and overlay it to cover up the frame with the glitch.

I started to compile the scenes into sequences. When I have all the sequences done, I'll compile them into the full movie. I have the first four sequences done and have five more to do. I did the fifth one too, but forgot to do something, so will need to redo it.

I had planned to just do the images for this version of the movie (version 0.2), but decided to do a few of the sound effects I had planned to do. Mostly phones ringing. I'll leave the bulk of the sound work to the next version (version 0.3).

I should have this version of the movie done this week. I plan to show it to my wife when I'm done. If she likes it, I'll start on the next version.

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

A Movie I Want to See and Other Notes

I moved forward a little on "The Barrier" this week. I also made some changes to my website, and cancelled my Bukisa account.

A Movie I Want to See

A while back, I wrote a blog post about my goals for "The Barrier" (http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/my-goals-for-the-barrier/). This morning I thought about it some more and realized that one of my goals was to make a movie I wanted to see. "The Barrier" isn't finished yet, but I think that I have accomplished that.

The big question now is: will anyone else want to see it. I believe that if I want to see something, then other people will as well. If my tastes are one in a million, then there are only a few thousand people in the world who want to see it, but if my tastes are one in a thousand, then there are several million people who want to see it.

It's times like this that I hope that my tastes are not uncommon.

"The Barrier"

I did some work on version 0.2 of "The Barrier" this week. my main objective was to review the videos I have now and identify which ones needed more work before I can put the movie together.

I left the computer screens blank in scenes where they are seen, so I need to create images for them and composite them into the video. I started to prepare the images this week and have most of them done. The ones I still have left to do are more complex and will take me a while to do.

Another problem I found was that some videos have "glitches" where the video breaks up. For the most part, it looks like it is just a single frame that is messed up. I have some tricks I can use to cover that up.

Later I will need to add in some more audio; sound effects mostly. I also want to process some of the dialogue, such as people talking over the phone, so it sounds like they are on the phone. I wonder if there are places where I can add some music. I need to find some free music if I want to do that. I plan to leave the sound work to version 0.3 or later.

Website

I did some modifications to my website this week. I've had a donation button and a store page, but they never generated any money for me. I changed my tactics and replaced the donation button with a link that asks: Do you believe that artists should be paid for the work they do? That links to a "support my work" page. I have my donation button there and some other suggestions on how to support me work. That hasn't generated any money either. At least not yet.

I changed the web page Monday, but I get the old version of some pages for some reason. Apparently they get cached somewhere. I'm not sure how to refresh the cache.

Bukisa

Bukisa is a website where I published some of the articles I wrote. It did generate some money for me over the years. About $18 altogether. Good thing I have a pension.

They sent out a note this week that they had lost their agreement with Google to handle advertizing. They won't have any money come in anymore. They tried to encourage people to leave their articles on the site, but I decided to just dump them all. I cancelled my account too.

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

Onto the Next Phase of "The Barrier"

I made some very good progress  on "The Barrier" this week. I completed the backgrounds for the "open house" scene and composited them into the scene. Now I can get onto the next phase.

I gave up on trying to convert the orientation parameters in Xtranormal into their equivalent in Blender. I came up with a more brute force method that worked out OK.

I used the location markers in Xtranormal to identify the corners of each camera's frame. Next, I unzipped the state file, edited the document.xml file and got the location marker coordinates. I used those coordinates to create a plane in Blender which formed a target that I used to adjust the orientation and focal length of the camera.

It was slow going to begin with, but it went faster as I did more. Of course, now that I have what I need, I won't likely need to use it again. In my work in transportation models it was often that I would spend a long time working out how to do something, use it once and then never use it again.

Next week I can start on the next phase of the project. Some of the scenes have stuff like computer screens that I left as green screens. I have the images I want for most of them, but will need to do a few more. Then I can composite them into the scenes.

I've started to think about the sound. I have all the dialogue and some sound effects already done, but there are some long stretches of silence I want to fill in. Also, I think some other scenes could be improved with appropriate background noise.

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