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

Project Updates 2023 February 5

This week I worked on my new script for the Older Filmmaker’s Club, and started to explore Unreal Engine.

Older Filmmaker’s Club short film script challenge

I worked on my script for the Older Filmmaker’s Club short film script challenge. Last week I had written part of it as a short story. This week I got a draft script done. I decided to leave it for a bit before I had another go at it.

I have mixed emotions about it. It seems to me that it is too superficial. At the same time, I find myself getting very emotional about it. I feel that it was good for me to write it, but I am not sure that I really want to share it with other people.

Changing Priorities

I had planned to do some more experiments with ChatGPT this week. My idea was to feed it one of my story outlines and ask it to write the story based on it. I wanted to see if that would be of any use in helping me write.

However, I changed my mind.

Last year I bought my new computer so I could use some of the newer animation programs. Even the new release Blender, which I had experience with, wouldn’t work on my computer. I felt that it would be better for me to spend my time learning and testing those rather than diving deeper into ChatGPT.

Cascadeur

I looked at Cascadeur, an animation program with AI features. In other programs, when you adjust one body part of a character, you need to adjust all the other parts to fit. For example, when you take a step forward, the rest of your body will shift to maintain balance. With other programs, you have to do this body part by body part. This program uses AI to do it automatically.

It is an interesting approach, but, after a bit of investigation, I decided that it really wasn’t what I was looking for.

·       https://cascadeur.com/

Unreal Engine

Last year I looked at iClone and Unreal Engine, but neither of them would run on my old computer. That is why I bought my new computer.

I had leaned toward iClone, but since Unreal Engine is free to use on movie projects under $1,000,000, I decided I should try it first.

I found a 4-hour long training video on YouTube teaching Unreal Engine for Blender users. Since I have used Blender, I figured this would be a good option. So far, I’ve only watched about 20 minutes of the video. I kept stopping to go try out what they showed. It does seem easier to get the photo realistic look. I was never able to get that with Blender.

·    https://www.reallusion.com/iclone/

https://www.unrealengine.com/

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

ChatGPT Test

There has been a lot of discussion of how Artificial Intelligence systems, like ChatGPT, will change the world. After prompting from several people, I decided to try ChatGPT.

What I wanted to test was whether an AI system, like ChapGPT, could be a useful tool in my writing and movie making. I’m looking at ChatGPT as something that might help me write. I am not looking at it as something that would create stories I want to read.

I’ve been doing a series of writing exercises based on a random title prompt. My plan was to give ChatGPT one of the prompts I had used recently. I chose “The Old House and the Desperate Baroness.” I’d posted a new recording of it last week: https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-old-house-and-the-desperate-baroness-1

I gave ChatGPT the prompt:

Write a 500-word story with the title "The Old House and the Desperate Baroness.”

It took about a minute to produce the short story, which ended up being 561 words long. I turned it into a recording using a computer-generated voice. I thought that would appropriate. "The Old House and the Desperate Baroness” by ChatGPT

I was impressed that the story was coherent and an easy read. It wasn’t the kind of story that I would have written. I like my story better. My story had a bit of a sad end for the baroness, while ChatGPT gave her a happy ending. I wanted a story with some dialogue, but this story had none.

I decided to ask ChatGPT to write a script, so I gave it the prompt:

Write a 5-page film script with the title "The Old House and the Desperate Baroness.”

It refused. This was its response:

I'm sorry, I am not able to write a 5-page film script at this time. My capabilities are better suited for providing concise and accurate information or answering questions. If you need assistance in creating a script, I recommend consulting a professional screenwriter or utilizing script-writing software.

I think there is more to learn about how to use ChatGPT. I suspect that the creativity in the stories it writes must come from the prompt you give it.

I would like to try giving it an outline for a story. I have several projects where I am stuck at the outline stage and need to do some more research before I can write the stories. I wonder if ChatGPT can do that for me. I would expect that all I would get would be a first draft that I would need to rewrite.

More generally, I think that the limitation of artificial intelligence systems is that unlike people, they don’t want anything. They can only react to a prompt or command.

I talked about Artificial Intelligence in some previous blog posts.

·         http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/joi-and-virtual-john/

·         https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/setting-priorities-for-2020/

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