Blender, Old Filmmakers, and a New Video – 2022 February 27

This week I installed Blender version 3.0, joined the Older Filmmakers ZOOM meeting, and started work on a video based on my writing exercise "The Desperation of the Wretched Senator.”

Blender

I got version 3.0 of Blender working this week. I found a software workaround on-line and installed it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PgDDIxXUbE  That did the trick.

I watched a bunch of videos about Blender 3 and Unreal Engine 5 on YouTube. They both look like they can let me do the kind of videos I’d like to make. I’ve used Blender a fair bit in the past, so I decided to start with it.

I watched a few “how to use” videos and tried out some of the techniques they showed. There is a lot more I need to master before I can switch to it for my animated videos. I haven't figured out how to get it to do the fancy character animation and talking that I need to do that.

"The Desperation of the Wretched Senator”

I don’t like to do stories that are overtly political. But, with a title like this, that is kind of hard to avoid.

I posted the audio version last week. I hadn’t intended to make a video but changed my mind on the spur of the moment. It only took me about a half hour to produce the first version of the video using NAWMAL. Since then, I’ve spent about 3 or 4 hours tweaking it. I adjusted the camera angle, facial expressions, and timings. I ad some fun creating pictures for the senator to put on his wall.

The voices bothered me. I’d done both the male character voices and used VoiceMaker for the female character. The female character only has two brief lines, so I didn’t change that. The two male voices were just too similar. I rerecorded the “Gentleman’s” voice and dropped it into the program.

The video is pretty much the way I want it now, except I want to add one or to brief scenes outside the senator’s office building. I’m not able to do that in NAWMAL, so I am going to do those with Blender.

I tried to create the scene for "The Desperation of the Wretched Senator” using Blender version 3. It worked so differently from what I was familiar with that I struggled to do anything. In the end, I switched back to Blender version 2.79. I have both 3.0 and 2.79 installed on my computer. At least I knew how to do simple things with that. I’m not done yet, but I did make progress.

Older Filmmakers Club

Monday was another old filmmakers club session. I felt it went well and I think we helped at least one person connect with someone to help her make her film become real.

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