Character Motivation: Pain and Illness

One of the more difficult challenges you face when you create a story is that the hero needs to be smart enough to get out of a jam, but dumb enough to get into it in the first place. I wonder if an illness could be used to explain the lapse.

I wrote about character motivation before. You can read a couple of my earlier discussions at the links at the end of this post.

I've thought about the possibility of illness as a motivation for a character's behaviour for a while now.

Can Illness or Pain Affect People's Behaviour?

Illness and pain have affected many of my own decisions. More that once I made bad decisions because some pain or illness distracted my thoughts. I remember meetings where I agreed to something I later regretted because I just wanted the meeting to end so I could go home to bed. I expect that other people have done the same thing.

I read recently that up to a third of people have to cope with chronic pain. Not everyone reacts the same way. Pain can lead some people to become very selfish, while others may have the opposite reaction and develop greater empathy for other people.

"The Crying Woman"

I can think of only one character I created where pain or illness could impact their decisions. The character Johnny in "The Crying Woman" has an illness. When I wrote the story, I didn't consciously think about that as a motivation for his character. I did use it as an explanation for why the character Mary didn't recognize him.

In the story Johnny shows a lot of empathy. When I wrote the story, I thought this was based on his previous experience with Mary. It could also be that with his experience with his illness has made him more aware of the struggles that other people have in life. This must be a factor, since his situation is much worse than hers, and yet that doesn't diminish his empathy.

Other Stories

Pain and illness do show up in many stories.

·         There are stories where pain or illness are obstacles that a character needs to overcome.

·         There are stories where pain or illness is used to create empathy for the character.

·         There are stories where pain or illness is used to remove a character from active involvement in the story.

I don't remember any stories where pain or illness is used as a character flaw to cause a character's bad decision. This may represent the limits my own knowledge. There may be many stories where pain and illness are important factors in a character's behaviour that I am just not aware of. Maybe other people can name examples.

Opportunities

This strikes me as a missed opportunity. As I noted above, many people have to struggle with pain and illness in their lives and these pains and illnesses directly impact their decisions.

I don't want to become an evangelist and push others to use pain and illness for character motivation. However, in future, I will be open to these as motivators in my own stories.

Related Posts

Don't Let Your Heroes Be Stupid

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/articles/dont-let-your-heroes-be-stupid/

Can Cognitive Biases Help Me With Character Motivations

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/can-cognitive-biases-help-me-with-character-motivations/

The Crying Woman

http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-crying-woman/

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

New Wall Poster for "The Barrier"

I redid a poster that I have on a wall in one scene of "The Barrier" this week. The poster isn't a big element of the story, but it is a detail that some people might find distracting if it doesn't look right.

In the open house scene Arthur stands in front of a poster that describes the barrier on Gladstone Parkway. The scene starts at the 46:18 mark in the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0

I felt that it look primitive compared to the other posters in the scene and I wanted to replace it for the next version of the movie. While most of the others incorporate images that look like aerial photos, the Gladstone poster just has a line drawing.

I created a pseudo air photo from the same Blender file I used to create the animations of Arthur on the Gladstone Parkway. From the top, the forest looks rather sparse, so I moved and added some more trees. It still looked a bit sparse to me, but I decided that it would be enough. I may need to modify the traffic simulation video to match the look.

I created an image file of the area and then imported it into the PowerPoint file I used to create the original Gladstone poster. I had to make some adjustments to the captions on the poster so they'd be visible. I think the new poster looks better.

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

Dabbling in "The Barrier"

I restarted my rewrite of "The Barrier" this week. My family responsibilities took precedence over my movie for the last few weeks.

It had been a while since I looked at the rewrite, and I found that I had changed my mind about what I wanted to go with it. Most of the effort I put in was on story structure. I deleted several scenes, I added some scenes, and I changed the order of some of the scenes.

One of the problems with the old version of the story was that I felt more emphasis needed to be on the barrier part of the story. Too much focused on Campbell's Glencoe development. I found in the rewrite that most of scenes ended up longer, which made the whole movie longer than I wanted. That allowed me to drop some of the Glencoe scenes.

Most of the scenes I added were to accommodate the new scene I created of Arthur's video shoot on Gladstone. I also needed to modify some existing scenes to fit it in. I did need to add a short scene to fill a gap left in the Glencoe story when I deleted those scenes. It was fortunate that I was able to cut them out without creating a major issue with the story.

I wrote brief versions of the new scenes, but they will need to be rewritten. I wanted to have something that I could start from. I had a good idea what I want to happen in them, but found it hard to get motivated to write them in much detail.

The hard part will come when I have to rewrite other scenes to adjust for the scenes I deleted or I added. There is a lot of good stuff that I will need to cut out.

With all the politics, doom and gloom in the news lately, the subject of "The Barrier" can seem trivial. However, I think the issues I address in the movie are important. Big complex things are built from many small simple things.

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

Super Habitable Planets and the Fermi Paradox

Recently I read that some scientists think that there may be planets more suitable to life than Earth. How does this relate to the Fermi Paradox?

What is the Fermi Paradox?

The Fermi Paradox comes from a question that the physicist Enrico Fermi asked during a discussion of flying saucers in the late 1940s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

When you consider the age of the Universe, it seems likely that civilizations should have developed on other planets. If so, they should have been able to colonize the entire galaxy by now. Since we see no evidence of aliens, the question we need to ask is "where are they?"

Over the years since then, scientists have come up with a variety of solutions to this question. If there are super habitable planets, how can we explain this paradox?

What is a Super Habitable Planet?

René Heller and John Armstrong suggest that many exo-planets may be more conducive to life than Earth.  (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhabitable_planet) Briefly, a super habitable planet would be larger than Earth and orbit a smaller, and cooler, star.

Heller and Armstrong suggested that a planet about twice the mass of Earth would be the most suitable for life. The larger size would help maintain a thicker and more stable atmosphere for a longer time.

Cooler stars, like orange dwarf and red dwarf stars, are much more common that yellow dwarf stars like the Sun. The habitable zone around these star would be stable for longer periods. This would allow more time for life to develop and evolve on a planet in the habitable zone.

There is a lot of room for debate about the habitability of planets. For this post, I will accept these ideas.

Civilizations on Super Habitable Planets

If super habitable planets are common, then why do we se no evidence of them? I think it may be that conditions on these planets make it more difficult for advanced civilizations to develop the technology to explore space.

Michael Chorost in his article "Do Super-Earths Trap the Civilizations On Them?" considers the possibility that the higher gravity and the required escape velocity would make it harder to reach space. (see https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/blog/world-wide-mind/201211/do-super-earths-trap-the-civilizations-them). He concludes that these limitations would not stop development of space travel. I think he is too optimistic and that the additional effort may make it unlikely that these civilizations would explore beyond their own planet.

A second explanation is that civilizations on super-earths may not be aware of space. These planets would have deeper and thicker atmospheres, which would limit their ability to see the stars and other planets in the sky. This would be particularly true of planets around smaller stars. These planets will become tidally locked and life could only survive in a narrow twilight band around the planet. The thick atmosphere and the brighter sky would prevent them from seeing the stars.

Lonely Planets

Another possibility would be planets that are the only sizable body in a solar system. Without an nearby destination, like the Moon and Mars for Earth, there would be no easy first steps. Also, without other planets, the imaginations of civilizations on these planets could not develop a science fiction literature about travel to other planets. With out this fantasy, there would be less drive to develop space technology.

Summary

One possible explanation of the Fermi Paradox is that most civilizations on habitable planets are unable to develop space technology. This may be due to the limits imposed by the nature of super habitable planets on the ability to reach space. The nature of these planets may also limit the ability of these civilizations to even conceive of the idea of travel beyond their own planet.

Earth may be rare, in that it is large enough for a technological civilization to develop, but is also small enough that space travel is relatively easy to develop.

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

Ancient Alien Probes and the Breakthrough Starshot Proposal

The Breakthrough Starshot  proposal from Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner got me to think about ancient alien probes again. Their proposal adds a twist to my earlier thoughts.

I've listed the ancient alien probe blog posts I did earlier at the bottom of this post.

Hawking, Milner and their collaborators have proposed a plan to send probes to visit nearby star systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot  

Their proposal is to build a multitude of centimetre sized probes with meter sized light sails, which would be accelerated to 20% the speed of light by huge lasers. This would allow them to reach the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, in about 20 years.

One of the research goals is to develop the technology to build useful probes that are a thin wafer about 1 or 2 centimetres in size. While this is a big challenge, they point out that smart phones already have similar capabilities and the bsic components are almost that small.

When I've thought of alien probes in the past, I've always envisioned them as similar to the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey". It's my favourite movie, so that influenced my thoughts. I assumed the probe would be of a similar size, something on the order of 3 to 4 metres.

The Starshot proposal made me realize that alien probes could well be no more than a few centimetres tall. A probe that small wouldn't look very impressive, unless you are an ant.

It is quite realistic to search for a 4 metre tall probe. Large parts of the Moon and Mars have already been photographed in sufficient detail to spot something that large. However, a search for a 4 centimetre tall probe is far beyond what we are currently capable of.

A failure to find an alien probe with our current technology would not prove that there are no alien probes in the solar system.

Some other posts on Ancient Alien Probes:

"Felix" and The Ancient Astronauts

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/felix-and-the-ancient-astronauts/

If There Really Were Ancient Astronauts, What Kind of Evidence Would We Find?

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/if-there-really-were-ancient-astronauts-what-kind-of-evidence-would-we-find/

Why Would Ancient Astronauts Visit Earth?

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/why-would-ancient-astronauts-visit-earth/

Do Ancient Alien Probes Watch Earth?

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/do-ancient-alien-probes-watch-earth/

A Brief Thought About the Fermi Paradox

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/a-brief-thought-about-the-fermi-paradox/

Ancient Alien Visitations: Show Me the Garbage

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/ancient-alien-visitations-show-me-the-garbage/

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

Preliminary Version of New Scene for "The Barrier"

I've completed the preliminary version of the new scene I wanted to create for my transportation planning movie: "The Barrier". I wanted to make sure I could do it before I continued with the script rewrite.

When I'm ready to make the new version of "The Barrier", I will do a final version of this scene. For this trial version I used some old stills of Arthur, my main character. When I do the final version I will do an animated version of Arthur with Nawmal. For me, it seems like the scene runs slowly, so I may go back and speed it up. It may seem faster after I add the animated Arthur.

Now, it's back to the script rewrite.

You can watch previous version of "The Barrier" (version 0.6) here:

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

Tests Shots for A New Scene in "The Barrier"

For the next version of my transportation planner movie, "The Barrier", I want to add a scene where Arthur makes video of the place where he wants to put the barrier.

I had wanted to do this for the original movie, but thought it would be too difficult. I decided to use Blender to create the scene. I made good progress this week, and have some test shots to share. Later I will use Nawmal to add Arthur to the scene.

You can watch the test shots here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oitpW0NeYg

I would like to come up with a better looking SUV than I created for the video.

You can watch previous version of "The Barrier" (version 0.6) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0

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

There Are Two Types of Money; I Think

For a while now, I've mused about how it might help to understand money if we think there are two different kinds of money. I think that other people might see some value in this idea.

In a nutshell, the idea is that there are two very different ways in which people use and think about money. I suspect this idea could help us gain insight into some of the economic problems we struggle with.

So What Do I Know

Someone once said that everyone has the right to opinion, but no right to be taken seriously. Should you take my ideas seriously?

I am not an economist. I did take a few courses back in University, and I have had an ongoing interest in the field. All the same, I can't claim to have much expertise in economics. Economists may well have discussed and discarded these ideas long ago and I just don't know about it.

However;

For most of my career I created and used transportation planning models. These are similar in some ways to economic models. As a result of my work, I've had to make a big effort to understand the behaviour of complex dynamic systems. The economy is certainly complex and dynamic. It is from this angle I've approached these ideas.

Get Rich Literature

I never had a real drive to get rich, and have been successful in not becoming rich. However, I did read some books and articles about how to become rich. What I learned is that rich people and the rest of us look at money in very different ways.

The non rich, for the most part, see money as what they need to live their life. Money is for food, clothes and a place to live. Most of us do save money for use later, but it is still meant as a means to buy the things we need to live later in our lives.

Not being rich, I find it difficult to explain exactly how the rich see money differently. From what I can tell, the rich see money as an end in itself. When you have large amounts of money, you have power and influence. While rich people do spend more money on food, clothes and a place to live, they don't see that as the main purpose of money.

A Brief Aside About Money and The Economy

The flow of money is key for a successful economy. It is not so much how much money there is, but how it moves through the economy that determines the strength of the economy. The same dollar can be re-spent hundreds of times over the course of a year.

A Simple Model of the Economy

In the chart below I've tried to show a simplified view of how the economy works to help explain what the two types of money are. I left out some important aspects of the economy because I did not think they were needed and might just confuse the issue.

In this view, I have two classes of people, owners and workers. Of course many people are both. I want to keep things simple, so I will treat them as if they are separate.

Owners invest in the economy, then gain profits and increases in the value of the property they own. Workers contribute their work to the economy and receive wages in return. The workers then spend the money they've earned on the products the economy has produced.

Owners also purchase products for their own use, but it is small compared to what workers spend and often small compared to what they gain in profit and asset value. I decided to ignore this spending.

In summary, investment and spending go into the economy, and wages and profits come out. How much workers can spend is dependent on how much they receive in wages. How much owners can invest is dependent on how much they receive in profits.

How to Have a Healthy Economy

We want to have an economy that works best for everyone. How money is split between wages and profits has an important effect on the health of the economy and the equity between rich and poor.

An extreme example will help explain this. If all the money went into profit and none went to wages, then workers would have no money to spend. If no money comes in from spending, the economy will collapse. Something similar would happen if all the money went to wages and none went to profits. Somewhere between these two extremes the economy will be stable.

There must, therefore, be an ideal split between profits and wages that produces the best economy. Send too much money to wages or send too much money to profit and everyone is worse off.

The important question is therefore: how do we get the split between wages and profits to match the ideal?

Thought Experiment: Two Currencies

I see two different types of money. Profits and investments are one kind of money. Wages and spending are a second kind of money.

For our thought experiment, assume that we have different currencies for the two types of money. We further assume that there is a floating exchange rate between the two currencies. We will call the profit and investment money dollars, and the wages and spending money donuts.

Would this arrangement help keep the split between the two types of money close to the ideal? I'd bet dollars to donuts that it would. ;)

If too much money goes to profits, this will cause dollars to have a higher inflation rate than donuts. This would push up the value of donuts relative to dollars. The effect would be to move the split between profits and wages back towards the ideal.

Similarly, if too much money went to wages, it would cause donuts to have  higher inflation rate than dollars. This would push up the value of dollars relative to donuts. Again, this would move the split between profits and wages back towards the ideal.

I don't see how this could be put into practice. It would be a very disruptive and difficult transition. However, I believe that it is a useful way to look at the issue.

Flaws in the Theory

No doubt, with the simplicity of my analysis, important factors that could affect this idea could be missed. Please let me know of any you may notice.

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

Traffic Simulation Replacement for "The Barrier"

There is scene in "The Barrier" where two characters watch a traffic simulation. I wasn't happy with the quality of the animation I did for the simulation, so this week I created a replacement for the next version of "The Barrier".

When I did the previous version of "The Barrier" I used MS PowerPoint to create the animation of the traffic simulation. At the time I didn't know to use any other software I could use to do the animation. I did consider asking some people I knew to do a video with a real traffic simulation program, but decided against that.

For the new animation I used Blender. I used Blender for some images for "The Barrier" and later to do the new opening scene of the current version of "The Barrier". I used the Blender file I created for that scene as a basis for the new animation.

I posted a comparison between the new and the old animations on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELFPtgbhc-k

The video I want to replace is at about the 36 minute mark of the current version of "The Barrier". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0

In my original plan for "The Barrier" I wanted to include a scene where Arthur shoots a video of the road where he wants to build the barrier. I dropped that idea because I didn't have the ability to make it work. With the experience I have with Blender now, I think I can put together a decent scene.

I made more changes for the revised script for "The Barrier". The parts I'm working on now have more drastic changes, so I think I will need to go back later and tune them up.

I think I'm getting closer to the point where it makes sense to get a license to use Nawmal. At least to update the STATE files with the changes I want to make.

I still won't be ready to record new voices for the movie though. I haven't decided how to handle that piece of work yet. Useful advice would be kindly accepted.

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

"The Barrier": How Specific Do I Need to be About the Transportation Model?

In my initial version of "The Barrier" I was kind of skimpy on the details of the issues with the transportation model. With the rewrite, I felt I needed to make that more detailed.

I revised 4 more scenes this week. I've done 14 of the 39 scenes I plan to rewrite. Most of the remaining scenes have only minor changes, but there are four scenes that need major rewrites. In those scenes I had the characters talk in vague generalities about the issues that come up about the transportation model. I started to work on those specifics this week.

I've run into some barriers of my own.

Hazy Memory

It's been 13 years since I last worked in transportation forecasting, and 7 years since I actively kept up with developments in the field. My memory has faded somewhat over those years. Transportation models have thousands of details that can become controversial. I struggled to remember a handful of major issues. I'm sure that as I think about it more, some more will come to mind.

Dated Knowledge

Since I haven't kept up on new developments, the criticisms of transportation models may well have changed. Around the time I left the field, new types of models were being introduced that were supposed to address some of the major criticisms of existing transportation models.

It may well be that some of the issues I want to use in the movie are no longer relevant. No doubt there would be some criticism of  the newer models, but I wouldn't know what they would be. I'm not keen to do a lot of research to update my self. Maybe someone can give me some suggestions I can use.

I do remember one criticism of the newer models was how much more time and effort they took to run. That isn't an issue I can use in my movie. Another was the perennial complaint about models that they were black boxes that nobody understood. I already use this in the movie. I even call the model software "BlackBox by VooDoo".

What I don't believe has changed is that forecasting models are still the weak link in the planning process. Knowledgeable people who want to question transportation plans will go after the forecasts. You can see the same pattern in the climate change debate.

Avoid Confusion

I worry that if I get too specific about the transportation model, people without some background in the field will get confused. On the other hand, the vague descriptions I used in the last version of "The Barrier" confused people anyway. I need to strike a balance where most viewers can follow what is happening.

The issues with the model are what Alfred Hitchcock used to call a McGuffin. It's what the characters in the movie think is important, but it isn't important to the story or the audience.

Options

My first inclination is to use the jargon that transportation planners would use. The problem with that approach is that then I would have to explain what the term means. I've done that in a few places already. I had the developer play dumb to force the engineers to explain what they meant.

In the scenes I need to revise, the characters should know what they talking about, which eliminates any excuse for characters to explain. The approach I have in mind is to have the characters describe the real world implication of the issue, rather than use the jargon. That might grate on people who do know the jargon.

For example, I want the consultant to criticise the volume delay curve equation. When I have Dennis talk about the note the consultant sent, he could say something like, "Here he questions how we calculate the delays from traffic congestion." Most people know what delay and traffic congestion mean. They don't need to know how the model estimates the delay.

Issues To Use

I've come up with a few more issues I think I can use.

·         Parking cost - this would affect whether people drive or take the bus.

·         Pedestrians mode constant in the modal choice model - this would affect how many people walk instead for drive.

·         Ride sharing - this would affect car pooling. This might include newer services like Uber or Lyft.

·         Trip distribution exponent - this would affect where people would go to work or shop.

·         Cycling - I plan to use a reference to cycling elsewhere in the revised script, so I wouldn't want to use it here.

I'll need to work on these issues some more before I go ahead with my rewrite. I still might decide to do some more research.

You can watch the previous version of "The Barrier" here: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/the-barrier/

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

Ancient Alien Visitations: Show Me the Garbage

In an earlier post I asked myself what might convince me that aliens had visited Earth in ancient times. I think I have an answer to that now.

Back in May 2015, I wrote a post about what evidence we'd find if aliens had visited Earth in ancient times.

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/if-there-really-were-ancient-astronauts-what-kind-of-evidence-would-we-find/ In that post I asked what kind of evidence would convince me that aliens had visited Earth.

Much of the evidence presented to support the ancient alien visitation hypothesis, is also used to support the advanced prehistoric civilization hypothesis. My discussion below would therefore also apply to that hypothesis.

Am I a Denier or a Sceptic?

So far, none of the evidence presented by advocates of the ancient alien visitation hypothesis has convinced me that there was any truth to the hypothesis.  The difference between a denier and a sceptic is that a sceptic can say what kind of evidence would cause them to change their mind. When I wrote the last post, I couldn't think of what might convince me, but I have thought about it several times since then.

Evidence: Show Me the Garbage

Recently I read an article on the Internet that reminded me that archaeologists find the study of  people's garbage dumps very useful in their research. What struck me was that the evidence proposed to support the ancient alien visitation hypotheses is by and large stone constructions. These can be explained in other ways.

If aliens had visited Earth and spent some considerable time here, surely they would have left some kind of garbage. If there had been a large scale presence of aliens in ancient times, we would find garbage that reflected a more advanced level of technology almost everywhere. These large accumulations of garbage would leave little doubt that aliens had visited. This kind of discovery of garbage would convince me of the reality of alien visitations.

For example, in recent times, modern humans have created vast amounts of garbage. You can find plastic garbage just about everywhere. It will take centuries for these plastics to biodegrade, and even then, they would leave evidence that could be detected thousands of years in the future.

I don't think any of the advocates of alien visitation have explicitly looked for garbage. There have been several finds that might be classed as garbage, but none that convince me.

Counter Argument: The Aliens Were Neat Freaks

If we do not find any ancient alien garbage, does that prove they didn't visit? You could argue that the reason we don't find garbage is that they were very advanced and did not create any garbage. Maybe they picked up everything before they left.

I think this is a possible explanation. Certainly many people today want to reduce the amount of garbage we produce. A more advanced society could have successfully reduced the volume of their garbage to the point that it is undetectable.

That isn't my concern here though. I did not set out to convince others that alien's did not visit. I wanted to find an example of the kind of evidence that would convince me that I was wrong about ancient alien visitation. Large volumes of alien garbage found in many parts of the world would be that kind of evidence.

Other related blog posts:

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/a-brief-thought-about-the-fermi-paradox/

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/why-would-ancient-astronauts-visit-earth/

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/do-ancient-alien-probes-watch-earth/

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

"Felix" and the Exploration of Mars - Part 3

A while back I developed my ideas about how Mars would be explored to firm up the back story of my story "Felix". This week I came across some material that suggests that real scientists have thought along the same lines.

In my earlier blog post: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/felix-and-the-exploration-of-mars/, I suggested that before people would visit Mars, we would send robots ahead to survey and then build a Mars base where people would live on Mars. I did a follow up to that blog post: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/felix-and-the-exploration-of-mars-part-2/

I found this article: http://www.popsci.com/we-could-be-living-on-moon-in-10-years-or-less, that reports on a conference about the possibilities of building a Moon village. The papers from the conference can be found at: http://online.liebertpub.com/toc/space/4/1

Moon and Mars Bases

Their focus is on the creation of a Moon base rather than a Mars base, although one of the participants said that he saw it as a step toward the creation of a Mars base. Although their focus is on the Moon, the approach they proposed was similar to what I had come up with for Mars. That gives me a little more confidence in my ideas.

I hadn't really thought about it as the background to my story, but it makes a lot of sense to me to test out the approach on the Moon before any attempt to do the same on Mars. That aspect wouldn't show up explicitly in "Felix".

Ideas for My Story

This report got me to think about my story again. I think I may have a solution to one of the problems with the story. In the story my Mars rover, Felix, is lost, which is why the astronauts were sent to search. However, the quality of the satellite images is so good now, that it would be very difficult for a rover to get lost.

I came up with two things I could add to the story that would explain how Felix could get lost. My first idea is that there would be a great dust storm, which happen now and then on Mars. That would prevent satellites from tracking the rover, and would also cover up its track way. The second idea is that the big discovery would in a large cave, which would be hidden from the satellite's view.

The more I think about these ideas, the more I think they could give the story some added interest and drama. That is another problem I have with the story: it doesn't seem to have much excitement. I just might get back to my rewrite one of these days.

Image sources:

• https://www.wpclipart.com/space/moon/moon_lithograph.jpg.html
• https://www.wpclipart.com/space/solar_system/Mars/Mars_NASA_photo.jpg.html

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

"The Barrier", "The Disruptors", and Relationships

This week, besides work on "The Barrier", and "The Disruptors", I also thought about how I should develop the relationship back-stories for characters.

"The Barrier"

My rewrite of "The Barrier" has gone quite slowly, but I managed to finish 5 of the 39 scenes I plan to rewrite. Once do I get started it goes smoothly, but I find it far too easy to put it off.

So far all of the revised scenes run longer. Version 0.6 of the movie runs about 86 minutes. If all of the scenes I rewrite end up longer by the same amount, it looks like the new version could run almost 2 hours. That is longer than what I'd like it to be.

There several existing scenes that seem repetitious to me. Maybe I can shorten the movie if eliminate those. It can get tricky when you try to cut stuff out though. I read somewhere recently that it is much easier to add material to a script than take it out. On the other hand, I've found with some of my earlier movies, that cutting out material would often improve the movie.

"The Disruptors"

I had planned to leave "The Disruptors" until later, but I had a bunch of ideas about the characters that I had to write down before I forgot them. I have a plot in mind, but after I did "The 89th Key" I decided I needed to put more effort into creating the characters before I develop the plot in more detail.

Relationships

Another thing I learned from "The 89th Key" was that it is important to define the relationships between the characters. Relationships develop during the course of a story, but what I have in mind is to develop a back-story for the relationships. I am not sure how I should go about that. I've seen questionnaires writers have set up to help them develop their characters. I haven't seen any to help you develop your characters' relationships.

I came up with a few ideas:

§         Are they friends, enemies or neutral?

§         Are they rivals or team mates?

§         Do they trust each other?

§         Do they like each other?

§         How strong is the relationship?

§         When did they meet?

§         How did they meet?

§         Was it one event that brought them together, or did it develop slowly over a longer period?

§         What do they have in common?

§         What do they normally talk about?

§         What do they disagree about?

§         What aspects of the other are they unaware of?

I'll need to give this list some more thought. It seems to me that there must be many other important questions to ask. Some of questions seem to duplicate others.

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

A Bunch of Brief Thoughts

I didn't accomplish much this week, but I did have some ideas and thoughts I wanted to share.

"The Barrier"

I did a little more work on my revised script for "The Barrier". My progress has been rather slow. I think that is because I'm not really sure how I'll get the film finished. I suspect that I will need to nail that down before I can get energized.

I need to get a better handle on what it will cost and how I can recruit and record the actors. Most of the rest of the work I know I can do on my own in my own time.

Recycled Ideas for Blog Posts

This is my 365th post to my blog. One of the issues I noticed recently is that I sometimes forget that I have used an idea for a blog post and write another post based on the same idea. I've caught myself several times and changed my post, but I probably missed a few.

Blog Posts Unrelated to my Creative Work

In general I've avoided blog posts that are not directly linked to my creative work. Often when I do, I try to link it to my work. Usually not very effectively.

I do have ideas I want to express that I don't see being fodder for a movie or a story. I have posted some of those on my articles page. http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/articles/

I do wonder if I should be more open to posts about ideas other than my creative work. There are many problems in this world and I often feel I have some thing to contribute to the discussion. My ideas may not be valuable or useful to others, but I find it helps me to express my ideas.

Things I Wish I Had Said

I, like many people, think of my best come back lines, long after it is too late. Sometimes many years later. This causes some frustration. I have thought that I can draw on these flash backs in my creative work. I used several of these in "The Barrier".

I have never used them as the basis for a project, although I did try a few times. Many of them bring back painful memories. While it can help to exorcise the negative feelings, it can also stir them up.

Midnight Thoughts

I struggled to get to sleep last night. I was obsessed with thoughts about my short story "A Woman Alone in a Cruel World". http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/a-woman-alone-in-a-cruel-world/

I came up with a different approach to the same idea. With my mind on fire, I got up and wrote out two short scenes. I think they could be developed into a longer narrative, but I'm not sure I want to revisit the original story. On the other hand, maybe it is a story that is begging me to be written.

$100 Film Festival

The 24th $100 Film Festival is on this weekend. http://100dollarfilmfestival.org/ I didn't go again this year. I haven't been to one since I went to see my film "Contingency" in 2012. My film "Some Days..." was shown in 2013, but my wife had surgery the same day, and that was more important to me.

I have had 9 of my films shown at the festival, and I did start it, so I do have a strong attachment to the festival. While I feel as if I have neglected it, it seems to be doing just fine without me.

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

"The Barrier" Script Rewrite 2015 February 21

I made progress on my rewrite of  "The Barrier", my transportation planning movie. The script is matched to the movie now. I started to work on the revisions to the script.

Conform Script to Current Movie

I conformed the script to match the caption file I created for the movie when I first released it. As I went through the script later, I caught several places where I'd missed some bits of dialogue.

Version 0.6 of the movie is still available on-line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0

Action Descriptions

When I created the script from the Xtranormal STATE files, I wasn't able to convert the actions and expressions. This left the script with just the scene headers, character names and dialogues.

I went through the script to add some action descriptions. I decided to keep the action descriptions to a minimum. Maybe I was too terse, but I wanted to move onto the next phase.

Character Descriptions

After I thought I was done with the action descriptions I came across an article about the Jane test (http://www.wired.com/2016/02/jane-test-movie-gender-roles/). It focussed on the sexist slant of the character descriptions  for female characters in the script. I had a look at my descriptions, and realized I didn't really have much to say at all. For example:

ARTHUR MACDONALD drives his car along a country road between a river and some hills.

LING PANG walks by.

ZELDA ZIMMERMAN and another woman sit at a table in front of the coffee shop.

I added some brief descriptions, which I don't think are sexist:

ARTHUR MACDONALD, a transportation engineer in his early 20s, drives his car along a country road between a river and some hills.

LING PANG, a transportation engineer in her mid 40s, walks by.

ZELDA ZIMMERMAN, a woman in her mid 20's, and another woman sit at a table in front of the coffee shop.

I was tempted to describe Zelda as "attractive", but decided it wasn't necessary.

These character descriptions are not really that critical to the script, since I had already chosen the characters from Xtranormal for the movie. I felt it would be a useful exercise for any scripts I write in the future, where I will need to include them.

Change Notes

As I went through the script to make the changes above, I inserted change notes where I came across something that I wanted to change. Most of these were cases where I felt that the dialogue didn't fit the character. For example, Ling says "oh my" to express her surprise and concern for Arthur when he tells her about his near accident. Not only do I feel that isn't what she'd say, but the character Meera says the same thing several times. I think it is appropriate for her.

When I first released the movie, several people sent me comments and suggestions. Since then I've written down several more ideas for changes. I went through the script a second time to insert notes where I wanted add those changes. Most of these changes were to clarify the story and dialogue where people were confused or put off.  There were a few places where I felt the scene was weak and could be improved.

Since I finished, I came across a few more ideas I'd forgotten about, and will need to add those as well.

When you make changes one place in a script, you often need to make changes elsewhere to keep the story consistent. I'll need to do at least one more pass through to fix those.

Rewriting the First Scene

I took my first stab at the rewrite with a go at Scene 8, where Arthur and Vincent Campbell first meet. My objective with the changes was to explain the hierarchy in the office, which some people found confusing.

I had Campbell play a mind game with Arthur, to force him to explain who he works for. Campbell, of course, already knows who's who and wants to put Arthur on the defensive right away. I think the result has some humour to it, and also reinforces Campbell's personality.

I thought I was done with the scene, but afterwards I started to think that I could delete or shorten some of the dialogue to tighten up the scene. For example I have a rather long introduction between two of the characters that is both dull and adds very little to the scene.

Ideas for Other Changes

I got an idea for a new scene where Arthur shoots a video of the dangerous curve in the road. I would need to change a couple other scenes to accommodate that. It would be a short scene, but would be as complicated to make as the new opening scene I added in version 0.6.

My other ideas involve improvements to the computer screens animations. I don't plan to add anything of substance, just improve how they look. Again, they might be quite complicated to create.

What to do After I have the New Script?

I haven't given too much thought to what my next step after I'm done with the script revisions. I could work on the extra animations I want to add, or I could get NawmalMAKE and start to create the new scenes. But, what troubles me is how I will handle the voices in the new version. NawmalMAKE has different voices from Xtranormal Desktop.

For the final version I want to hire vocal actors to do the voices. This could be expensive. I found commercial rates posted on-line that suggest it could cost me more than $2,000. I would prefer to use local actors. I haven't talked to any of the actors I know about what they would charge me. I made a vow that in the future I would always pay anyone who helped me with my movies. As an interim step I could use the new artificial voices that come with NawmalMAKE.

I've also thought I could use the voices from Acapela that I used the first time. From what I can see on their web site, I don't think I can download them and use them in NawmalMAKE, but I can use their Acapela Box website to create the audio. (https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php). This would cost me at least $920 for my whole movie. Possibly much more. I think it would be cheaper, about $600, to buy the voices to work with another program. If I did that, I could use the voices on other projects.

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

Maybe It's Time to Get a New Secret Cabal to Run the World

I don't believe that there is a secret cabal that runs the world, but if there is one, they don't seem to be very good at it. Maybe it is time that we replace them with a new secret cabal and see if they can do a better job.

Back when I made "Who Shot the President" I read a lot about various conspiracy theories. While secret conspiracies have existed in the past, and some may well exist now, it is doubtful that most of the large conspiracy theories have any basis in reality. A recent study demonstrated that large conspiracies unlikely to stay secret for long: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/math-vs-conspiracies/

Nevertheless, the concept of a large scale secret conspiracy to run the world still attracts people's interest. If nothing else, it certainly provides much fodder for fictional treatment.

For quite a while now, I've rejected the idea on the basis that if there was a secret cabal, they didn't seem to be competent. Eventually I came to think that if they were so bad at their job, they should be replaced. This might make a good story.

I need to have is a reasonable way for the secret cabal to be replaced. Of course, if it is more of a satire, I could come up with an absurd method to replace them.

I have the feeling that a lot of people who fervently believe that there is a secret cabal that runs the world would probably be very offended by any kind of satire. I got several threats of violence when I posted "Who Shot the President" on YouTube.

Maybe I could have the secret cabal's replacement put to a world wide democratic vote. The secret cabal would need to campaign to convince people to keep them in power. Other potential secret cabals would propose how they would run the secret world conspiracy. The unfortunate draw back is that I don't think I am ready to write something of this sort.

Another possibility is to have a higher level secret cabal that can hire and fire the lower level secret cabal. That could mean that there is an even higher level secret cabal that can hire and fire the higher level secret cabal. There could be an infinite number of levels of secret cabals. This could turn into another absurd story.

Maybe someday I'll be ready to take this on as a project, but for now I think I need to let it percolate through my mind. Maybe more inspiration will pop-up.

You can watch "Who Shot the President"  here: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/who-shot-the-president/

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

How to Deal With Jargon in "The Barrier"

One of the problems some viewers had with "The Barrier" was the amount of transportation planning jargon I used. I think I've come up with a way to deal with that. I also moved forward with my recreation of the script and creation of new subtitles.

How to Deal With Jargon in "The Barrier"

Some people commented that they didn't understand the jargon I used in the story. I don't want to completely replace the jargon because that would create long complicated descriptions all the time. I also want to avoid injecting "As you know Bob ..." dialogue to explain what the terms mean.

The approach I will try is to have the character Vincent Campbell play dumb. I don't want the character to be dumb. He just plays dumb as a tactic to manipulate people. He would deliberately misunderstand jargon, and force other characters to explain what they mean. There is already an example of this in the movie where Dennis needs to explain what a travel survey is. If I can make Campbell's misinterpretations humorous, that should keep the explanations from sounding too dry.

For example, when Arthur says he is concerned about the trip generation, Campbell's response would be, "Why would anyone care about drugged out old hippies?"

Recreated Script

I have all of the dialogue matched against the captions now. There were quite a few discrepancies I had to fix. Many of them were changes I made to improve pronunciation. There were only a couple of places where I had new dialogue to include.

I still need to add in some more action descriptions. I already did this for the first few scenes. I don't want to over do the action descriptions, because I don't need them for what I plan to do. I think they will help the voice actors understand the situation better.

The script is still in an Excel spreadsheet. For the rewrite this might be OK, but I think I need to convert it to a script format. I'm not so sure how to do that easily.

When I matched the dialogue, I noted some of the places where I want to make changes for the next version of the movie.

Revised Subtitles

When I made some changes to the movie back in 2014, I added some time at the start and so the old subtitles were out of sync. While I worked on the script recreation, I had to bring the old subtitles into the spreadsheet I used. This allowed me to adjust the times when the subtitles are displayed.

I had to work out what the adjustment should be. That took a couple of tries to get right. Although, there is a few places where I still think they might be off. Not by more than a half second though.

You can check out the new subtitles here: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/the-barrier/

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

"The Barrier" Script Match and the Next Step

I continued to match the script to the movie this week and I had some more thoughts on the where I go next with the project.

Match the Script to the Movie

The script I had was done before I finished the movie. I knew it wouldn't match exactly, so before I could start to revise the script, I needed to conform it to what was in the movie. I thought this would be a long slow process. I'd watch the movie and note the changes against the script along the way.

I wanted to find a quicker way.

I remembered that I had created a captions file for the first version I posted. It didn't match the current movie exactly either, but it was only a few lines at the start of the movie that were different.

I reformatted and imported both the captions and the script into Excel. This allowed me to align each line of the script to the corresponding line in the captions. There wasn't a perfect match because in the script each dialogue line in the script was a paragraph, while in the captions each dialogue was a sentence.

As I went through the file I had to split up the script paragraphs into sentences so I could do the comparisons. I had a formula that compared the line from the script with the line from the caption and flagged them when they were different.

So far I haven't found many cases where the actual dialogue was different. Most of the time I had modified the script to help the artificial voices pronounce some words. For example in the name Campbell, you don't hear the "p", so in the script I have it was cam-bell.

I am about half way through the script at the moment. It shouldn't take too long to get that completed. I'm unsure how I'll convert the Excel file back into a script format. I wonder if I really need to do that though. Certainly for the rewrite I won't need it. When it comes time to hire actors to record the voices, I likely will.

Notes on Changes to the Script

As I go through the script to conform it, I have started to add notes about the changes I want to make. I plan to go through the script again, but I thought it would be easier to make a note when I happen to spot something I want to change.

I noticed that I had many of the characters use the same phrases. Real people usually have their own pet phrases for how the express different feelings. I need to think about what kind of phrases each character would use, and come up with ones that add some uniqueness to each character.

I've had comments from some people that they found the transportation planning jargon confusing. I know I can likely come up with ways to replace the jargon with more common words. What I am reluctant to do is eliminate the jargon entirely because I think it adds realism to the story. I want to avoid "As you know Bob ..." kind of dialogue to explain the jargon. What I might do is have the character Vincent Campbell claim to misunderstand the jargon and force other characters to explain. This could be played as humour so it isn't so distracting.

An Intermediate Step to the Final Movie

The plan I have now is to rewrite the script and then hire some actors to redo the voices and then create a new version of the movie. This week I started to consider a different approach.

I made the movie with Xtranormal Desktop, which has now been replaced with NawmalMAKE. At some point I'll need to convert all the movie files to the new system. What I've started to lean to, is to do the conversion first and produce a revised movie with the same artificial voices from before. Then later, I would get actors to replace the dialogue.

NawmalMAKE doesn't have the same artificial voices as Xtranormal Desktop, so I'd either have to use the voices that are available, or buy the rights to use the old voices. The voices are from Acapela and you can create and buy clips of their voices on-line. https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php I figure it could cost me close to $1,000 to do this. That is quite a lot.

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

I Actually Did A Little Work on "The Barrier" This Week

I've procrastinated on "The Barrier", my transportation planning movie, for a long time. This week I actually did something.

I began to prepare a new version of the script that conforms to the movie as it currently stands. Once I have a baseline script, I can start to decide what changes I want to make.

I found an old version of the script that I created from the Xtranormal STATE files. It was a LibreOffice file and when I opened it, nothing showed. It turned out that the styles I'd set up for the script format had gotten deleted somehow. I managed to convert the file to MS Word and was able to fix it there.

According to my notes, after I created this script, I made some more changes to the STATE files before I created the video that I used in the movie. I might have cut some lines out when I did the edit. I don't remember for sure, so it is better to assume that I did. In 2014 I replaced the first scene. The original version had no dialogue, but thee new one did.

I tried to run the conversion program I created to turn the STATE file into the script format, but that didn't work. Rather than try to fix the conversion program, I just edited the STATE file and extracted the dialogue I wanted. I added that to the old script.

One of the limitations of my conversion is that it can't convert the actions into description. A few scenes had no dialogue, and so consisted solely of the slug line. I began to work my way through the script to add in the actions. I got through about 12 scenes, out of 60 scenes in total.

I wanted to check my script against the dialogue in the current version of the movie. My original plan was to play the movie and read the script along with the audio. I remembered that I had created a caption file for YouTube, and I realized I could use that instead. I haven't started on that yet. It may be a better idea to play the movie and use that instead of the caption file. It might help me identify changes to make.

It looks like this could be a long slow process.

Note: the current version of "The Barrier", version 0.6, can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0

I would like it if you could watch it and tell me what you think.

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