“Speed Date” and Revised “The Barrier” Videos Posted

I posted one new video and a revised old video on YouTube this week. I am slowly working away on my backlog of projects.

“Speed Date”

This project began as an experiment with NAWMAL about four years ago. It came together quickly. Unfortunately, the feedback I got was quite negative. I think the main sticking point was the computer-generated voices I used. I intended to record actors eventually but didn’t do that for the initial version while I worked on the script.

The blowback caused me to abandon the project.

A few months ago I revisited the project. Initially I recorded the voices myself and used voice.ai to give the different characters distinct voices. This worked better, but my acting skills are not much better than the computer-generated voices.

I brought in Mona Dallmann, who acted in my film “My Most Difficult Case” to rerecord the dialogue.

I finally finished editing “Speed Date,” this week.

You can watch it on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH7FUnTkeMM

“The Barrier”

One of the comments I get about the videos I’ve done with NAWMAL is that the movements all seem too slow. As an experiment I revised my video “The Barrier” by speeding it up. It was a bit tricky because after speeding up, the voice pitches were too high. In my initial attempt it turned out that threw the sync off. I didn’t pick it up until someone posted a comment on YouTube.

I reworked my process, and I now have a new version of the video that fixed the sound sync issue.

 

The new version is available on YouTube now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi2cWiRUjX8

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

“The Urgent Phone Call” at the ThirdACTion Film Festival

The ThirdAction Film Festival accepted “The Urgent Phone Call.”

https://www.thirdactionfilmfest.ca/taff-program

 Screening

It isn’t part of the live presentations. It is available on their Video on Demand Package, so you can watch it from there.

https://www.thirdactionfilmfest.ca/event-details/invisible-battles-stories-of-aging-ageism-resilience-video-on-demand-package

You may find some of the other films interesting too.

I wrote the script and produced the film, but I didn’t direct or edit it. This is the first film I’ve done where I didn’t direct and edit.

Genesis of the Film

I wrote the script in response to a challenge to the members of the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmaker’s Older Filmmakers’ Club. https://csif.org/clubs/ The goal of the challenge was to write a script for a short film set in one location with two or three characters. The limit was intended to produce a script that would be easy to shoot.

The story was inspired by a phone call I got one day. I felt I handled the situation well, but afterwards I thought about how it could have gone differently.

In writing the script, my hope was to encourage other members of the Older Filmmakers’ Club to start their own projects. I didn’t feel I physically up to the work I would need to do to make it happen. The positive feedback from a table read hosted by the Older Filmmakers’ Club, and Sher Dahl’s offer to direct convinced me to produce the film.

Thoughts

My experience making this film was very different from my previous films. That was largely because I wasn’t as actively involved. It reminded me again how all the many decisions you make during the various phases of production could easily be different. Little decisions can influence how the audience experiences the story.

For a long time I’ve wanted to make a longer project, but I find that a daunting task. I am leaning more toward the shorter, small format. I don’t want to pour a lot of my energy on a project I’ll never complete. I want to make films that work on several different levels. I think “The Urgent Phone Call” does accomplish that to some degree.

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

Project Updates 2025 March 30

I made progress on “The Urgent Phone Call, and “Speed Date” over the last few weeks. I was also involved with the CSIF Older Filmmaker’s Club.

“The Urgent Phone Call”

I have been submitting the film to some film festivals through https://filmfreeway.com/. This week I added a new synopsis and a trailer.

Synopsis: Jessie, a retired widow, is peacefully immersed in a beloved book on a quiet afternoon when she gets a phone call from "someone she loves dearly." The caller needs help with an urgent problem. Though she wants to do the right thing, Jessie remains cautious.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdNeC4KqCU0

I found writing the synopsis. The director, Sherri Dahl wrote one. That prompted me to write one based on hers. I wasn’t happy with what I wrote, so I asked ChatGPT to rewrite it. I wasn’t happy with what it came up with, but it did spur me to write an updated version that I felt better about. I did one more minor revision later.

The trailer had some challenges too. The copy of the film I have was in 4K, and the older video editor I use, Premiere Pro CS4, can’t handle that. I had to convert the file before I could do the trailer. I’ve been stalling about getting a newer video editor because I felt comfortable with the old one.

“Speed Date”

“Speed Date” is a short video I did a few years ago using Nawmal. The initial feedback I got on it was negative. I put it off to the side for a long time. I used text to speech voices for the dialogue and I felt that was why people didn’t like it.

Recently I redid the voices myself, using Voice.ai to modify my voice to give the characters distinct voices. The feedback I got was much more positive. I still wasn’t happy with the voices. My acting skills are not much better than the text to speech voices.

I asked Mona Dallmann, who acted in “My Most Difficult Case” to rerecord some of the dialogue. (https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/my-most-difficult-case)  I was happy with her performance. I haven’t completed incorporating her dialogue into the video yet.

When we discussed the video, she made a comment that surprised me. She pointed out the repeated use of the phase “from time to time.” One character uses it twice and another uses it once. All characters use the word “time” multiple times, and one character looks repeatedly at a wall clock.

I hadn’t noticed that myself. My initial thought was that the phrase “from time to time” is just a favorite expression of mine, so I tend to overuse it. However, I see the phase as suggestive of a kind of drifting through life attitude. That fits the story, which is about two people who have drifted through life.

I have noticed before that in much of the work I’ve done, other people see things that I didn’t consciously put in, but which makes sense or reflects my own attitudes.

The CSIF Older Filmmaker’s Club

I continue to be involved with this club. We had a couple of meetings. One was a session where people talked about project ideas. The other was the Saturday Afternoon Film Night, where we screened films that members made.

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