Progress
I did four new scenes for “The Barrier” this week. That added about a minute and a half,
which brings me up to just under 62 minutes in total. I expect the total will
end up a bit over 100 minutes, although it will end up a bit shorted after I’ve
cut it all together.
The scenes I did were fairly simple. Each had just two
characters, and the characters didn’t move around much. For the most part, the
scenes come directly from the stories, which made them easier to do. Two of
them were scenes where Arthur’s boss chews him out for something he did.
I started on a fifth scene, but didn’t get far with it.
File Conversion
I wanted to convert the Xtranormal state files into Celtx
files so I would have a script of the movie. I experimented a bit and came up
with a way to do the conversion. The method is a bit clunky, but works well
enough. The method doesn’t convert the actions in the film. I can add that, but
I’m not sure that it is worth the effort, since I would need to edit them
extensively.
The Xtranormal state files are zipped files that contain
several files. One of these, document.xml, is an XML file that contains the
dialogue and actions. The process uses two batch files to extract this file,
builds up a larger file with all of the scenes, and then uses an XSL file to
convert the XML file into HTML. Finally, I use copy and paste to put the
dialogue into Celtx. I’ve listed the batch files and XSL file below.
I had to over come a few snags. I had to add the lines
“<wholescript>” at the top of the file and “</wholescript>” at the
bottom of the file, otherwise the XSL wouldn’t work. When I combined the files,
a “” was added after each new file. I don’t know why that happened. I have to
edit the combined file and delete all of the “” or the XSL won’t work.
My programming skills are somewhat limited and I’m sure that
a more skilled person could improve this method. If anyone does come up with a
better version, please let me know.
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barrier_cnv_main.bat
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erase
t1.xml
erase
t1.zip
erase
script.xml
copy
top.xml script.xml
call
cnv_sub.bat Scene01.state
call
cnv_sub.bat Scene02.state
copy
script.xml+bottom.xml
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cnv_sub.bat
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copy
%1 t1.zip
"c:\program
files\winzip\wzunzip" t1.zip document.xml
copy
script.xml+document.xml
erase
document.xml
erase
t1.zip
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top.xml
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<?xml
version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet
type="text/xsl" href="convert.xsl"?>
<wholemovie>
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bottom.xml
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</wholemovie>
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convert.xsl
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<?xml
version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet
version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template
match="scene">
<html>
<head>
<title>
<xsl:value-of
select="@title"/>
</title>
<style>
p.sceneheading
{ font-family: "courier"; test- transform: "uppercase"}
p.character
{ font-family: "courier"; test-transform: "uppercase";
text-indent:250}
p.dialog
{ font-family: "courier"; text-indent:150}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p
class="sceneheading">
<xsl:value-of
select="@title"/>
</p>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template
match="line">
<p
class="character">
<xsl:value-of
select="@speaker"/>
</p>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template
match="text">
<p
class="dialog">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</p>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="listener">
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template
match="stance">
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
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This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog
