“The Werewolf and the Self-Satisfied Negotiator” and “Felix: A Martian Mystery”

I posted another writing exercise and finished my treatment for my Mars story.

 “The Werewolf and the Self-Satisfied Negotiator”

This week’s random title for my writing exercise was “The Werewolf and the Self-Satisfied Negotiator.” I got it written, recorded, and posted by the end of the week.

A man walking late at night in a dark forest feels no fear when he encounters a werewolf.

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-werewolf-and-the-self-satisfied-negotiator

It does turn kind of dark at the end.

“Felix: A Martian Mystery”

I finished my treatment for “Felix: A Martian Mystery.” I have asked several people for feedback on it. If you would like to give me feedback on it, get in touch and I will send you the link.

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

Mission to Mars

China just launched a robotic mission to Mars. I anticipated this mission! I made a short video a couple years ago for my conversational Mandarin class about a trip to mars. You can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqpdEFnbeoM

Here is a report about the real mission. I hope they will be happier than I was.

https://www.space.com/china-tianwen-1-mars-mission-launch.html

 

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

Martian Trip Video Posted

I posted a new video this week about my trip to Mars. I didn't actually go to Mars to make it. The video began as a short story I wrote for a class I took on conversational Mandarin, so the narration is in Mandarin. There are English subtitles though.

My new trip to Mars video is now posted at:

http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/my-trip-to-mars/ , and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqpdEFnbeoM

After my wife died last year, her brother took her remains back to China for burial. My wife and I agreed to that before she died. My brother-in-law invited me to visit to see her grave. I didn't speak any Mandarin and was worried about travelling there on my own. I decided to take a class to learn some of the language.

We had to write, and present, a short story in Mandarin. It was supposed to be only five sentences long. Mine ended up as six, but no one complained.

I'm still not very confident about my pronunciation, and I have trouble remembering words. After I recorded the audio, I asked some Mandarin speaking friends review it. I had to rerecord part of it.

I used some images of the Earth and Mars from the NASA website. They are in the public domain. I only needed one image of the Earth. I used several images of the Martian surface. To make them more visually interesting, I did either a pan or a zoom to give some motion. I had created a star-scape for another project, and I used that as the background for the full planet images.

In my original version, I used an image from the movie "The Martian". The image was exactly what I wanted, but since it wasn't public domain, I decided I needed something else. I tried several approaches before I found something I liked. Like the other images, I have an image of the Martian surface pan across the screen. I added a video of an eye blinking, so as to appear as if an astronaut was looking through a visor.

I wanted to add some background sound to the narration. NASA created audio files of the sounds that different planets and the Sun make. I think they convert the radio waves they produce to make the sound. I used sounds for the Earth, The Sun, and Mars.

I did sneak in a bit of an Easter egg. Only one person has mentioned it so far.

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

Interstellar and Martian Trips

It has been a while since I last posted. I've had a difficult time getting active on any of my movie projects. In the last few weeks I have started work on a couple of small projects that should result in something to post soon.

I've had a large number of people sign up for my mailing list while I was inactive. I have no idea why.

Red Star Planet Flyby

The Breakthrough Starshot project caught my interest when I first learned of it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot). It is a proposal to send a probe to the Alpha Centauri star system. I would like to see what they find.

Unfortunately for me, they think it will be 20 years to develop the technology, 20 to 30 years to travel to the star and then 4 or 5 years to send back the data. I don't need to reveal my age for people to realize that I won't likely be around to see the result.

So, what I have started to work on is a simulated flyby through an alien star system. Then, at least, I'd get some idea what they might see.

I've used Blender to create the simulated star system. I haven't given it a name yet. It is not based on any real star. I gave it 4 planets, 3 super Earths and a smaller planet. The furthest planet is about 7,500,000 km from the star. The size and distances of the planets and the star are all to the same scale.

I need to work on the appearance of the planets. I want them to look realistic. Since my artistic skills are a bit primitive, that is a bit of a challenge. For testing I have just used maps of planets and moons in our system. I'll come up with something else before I'm done.

The probe is projected to have a speed op about 20% the speed of light. At that speed, it takes about 7 minutes to pass through the system. For my test I sped that up to about 140% the speed of light. That isn't realistic, but it gave me an idea what the final version would look like.

The test version was a disappointment. The path I laid out for the probe was too far from any of the planets. I will need to change the path, or move the planets.

I wanted to have the camera point at each of the planets at it flew by. I set some key frame locations and orientation of the camera, and let Blender interpolate the other frames. This didn't work very well. The camera would drift off the planet, then snap back. I am not an expert in Blender, so maybe there is an automated way to do that. If I don't figure that out, I may need to modify the location and orientation for each frame.

Seven minutes of silence can be boring, so I want to have some sound. I have some ideas, but I haven't followed up on them yet.

Trip to Mars

I am not actually planning to go to Mars, just do a video about the trip.

I am taking a course in conversational Mandarin. My wife is buried in China, and I'll need to speak a little bit of the language to travel there. I'm not doing very well with it so far.

I did have some success with a short story I wrote for the class. It is only 5 sentences long. My first idea was to talk about my wife, but I felt I might get too emotional. Instead I wrote about an imaginary trip I took to Mars.

I made a PowerPoint presentation to go with the story. I plan to turn that into a short video. Some of the images I used were copy written, so I'll have to find something in the public domain. I don't think I can afford to go to Mars and take my own pictures.

I will record the Mandarin myself, but will include some English subtitles for non Mandarin speakers, and Chinese subtitles for Mandarin speakers who can't make sense of my poor pronunciation.

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

"Felix" and "The Barrier"

I worked on both "Felix" and "The Barrier" this week. The "Felix" rewrite progressed well, but with "The Barrier" it just seemed like I spun my wheels. I still would call it a productive week though.

"Felix" Rewrite

I tried my new approach with "Felix" this week. I printed off the most recent version, then sat out in the back yard, went through the printout and made my revisions. I got about a quarter of the way through. I thought this approach worked and I felt positive about the revisions I made.

Later in the story I have some sections that I will likely have to completely replace. I may even need to add totally new material. That will take a bit longer. I think that I will need to go through the whole story at least one more time before I'm done this revision. It should be ready to share with other people then.

One of the problems I have noticed is some of the technology the astronauts use on Mars seems outdated. I can't mix 2020's technology with 1960's technology. For example, I gave the rover a considerable level of autonomy, but the astronaut's have to drive their own vehicle. I can fix much of that fairly easily, since the technology is mostly in the background. Unfortunately, some of it is tied to major plot points.

I thought it would be enjoyable to sit outside and listen to the birds as I worked. Unfortunately, we only seem to have crows and magpies around here, so not much in the way of  beautiful songs. The chattering of the squirrels sounded better, but after what they did to our garden, it's hard to feel too kindly toward them. I did find it more restful to be outside though.

"The Barrier"

I did some more research on one of the programs I want to use to do "The Barrier". I used up a lot of time, but I can't say I have much to show for it. I can say I did learn more about what it can do. I can't really get too far along with the new version until Xtranormal is rereleased.

I've given some thought to what I'll do with the movie when I get it done. My current plan is to use a site like http://distrify.com/ to distribute the movie. There are several sites that look similar, so I should do some more investigation before I sign up for one.

I believe that this is the first movie ever made specifically about transportation planning, so I need to promote it transportation planners. There might not be much of an audience beyond people who work in the field.

I've done some posts on a few LinkedIn transportation planning groups, but I think I need to look at other options. There are a number of transportation planning magazines, newsletters and journals. I don't think they would have movie reviewers, but I still think I should approach them.

I could use some contacts at these outlets. If you can help me I would appreciate it.

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