"The Barrier" Script Rewrite 2015 February 21

I made progress on my rewrite of  "The Barrier", my transportation planning movie. The script is matched to the movie now. I started to work on the revisions to the script.

Conform Script to Current Movie

I conformed the script to match the caption file I created for the movie when I first released it. As I went through the script later, I caught several places where I'd missed some bits of dialogue.

Version 0.6 of the movie is still available on-line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0

Action Descriptions

When I created the script from the Xtranormal STATE files, I wasn't able to convert the actions and expressions. This left the script with just the scene headers, character names and dialogues.

I went through the script to add some action descriptions. I decided to keep the action descriptions to a minimum. Maybe I was too terse, but I wanted to move onto the next phase.

Character Descriptions

After I thought I was done with the action descriptions I came across an article about the Jane test (http://www.wired.com/2016/02/jane-test-movie-gender-roles/). It focussed on the sexist slant of the character descriptions  for female characters in the script. I had a look at my descriptions, and realized I didn't really have much to say at all. For example:

ARTHUR MACDONALD drives his car along a country road between a river and some hills.

LING PANG walks by.

ZELDA ZIMMERMAN and another woman sit at a table in front of the coffee shop.

I added some brief descriptions, which I don't think are sexist:

ARTHUR MACDONALD, a transportation engineer in his early 20s, drives his car along a country road between a river and some hills.

LING PANG, a transportation engineer in her mid 40s, walks by.

ZELDA ZIMMERMAN, a woman in her mid 20's, and another woman sit at a table in front of the coffee shop.

I was tempted to describe Zelda as "attractive", but decided it wasn't necessary.

These character descriptions are not really that critical to the script, since I had already chosen the characters from Xtranormal for the movie. I felt it would be a useful exercise for any scripts I write in the future, where I will need to include them.

Change Notes

As I went through the script to make the changes above, I inserted change notes where I came across something that I wanted to change. Most of these were cases where I felt that the dialogue didn't fit the character. For example, Ling says "oh my" to express her surprise and concern for Arthur when he tells her about his near accident. Not only do I feel that isn't what she'd say, but the character Meera says the same thing several times. I think it is appropriate for her.

When I first released the movie, several people sent me comments and suggestions. Since then I've written down several more ideas for changes. I went through the script a second time to insert notes where I wanted add those changes. Most of these changes were to clarify the story and dialogue where people were confused or put off.  There were a few places where I felt the scene was weak and could be improved.

Since I finished, I came across a few more ideas I'd forgotten about, and will need to add those as well.

When you make changes one place in a script, you often need to make changes elsewhere to keep the story consistent. I'll need to do at least one more pass through to fix those.

Rewriting the First Scene

I took my first stab at the rewrite with a go at Scene 8, where Arthur and Vincent Campbell first meet. My objective with the changes was to explain the hierarchy in the office, which some people found confusing.

I had Campbell play a mind game with Arthur, to force him to explain who he works for. Campbell, of course, already knows who's who and wants to put Arthur on the defensive right away. I think the result has some humour to it, and also reinforces Campbell's personality.

I thought I was done with the scene, but afterwards I started to think that I could delete or shorten some of the dialogue to tighten up the scene. For example I have a rather long introduction between two of the characters that is both dull and adds very little to the scene.

Ideas for Other Changes

I got an idea for a new scene where Arthur shoots a video of the dangerous curve in the road. I would need to change a couple other scenes to accommodate that. It would be a short scene, but would be as complicated to make as the new opening scene I added in version 0.6.

My other ideas involve improvements to the computer screens animations. I don't plan to add anything of substance, just improve how they look. Again, they might be quite complicated to create.

What to do After I have the New Script?

I haven't given too much thought to what my next step after I'm done with the script revisions. I could work on the extra animations I want to add, or I could get NawmalMAKE and start to create the new scenes. But, what troubles me is how I will handle the voices in the new version. NawmalMAKE has different voices from Xtranormal Desktop.

For the final version I want to hire vocal actors to do the voices. This could be expensive. I found commercial rates posted on-line that suggest it could cost me more than $2,000. I would prefer to use local actors. I haven't talked to any of the actors I know about what they would charge me. I made a vow that in the future I would always pay anyone who helped me with my movies. As an interim step I could use the new artificial voices that come with NawmalMAKE.

I've also thought I could use the voices from Acapela that I used the first time. From what I can see on their web site, I don't think I can download them and use them in NawmalMAKE, but I can use their Acapela Box website to create the audio. (https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php). This would cost me at least $920 for my whole movie. Possibly much more. I think it would be cheaper, about $600, to buy the voices to work with another program. If I did that, I could use the voices on other projects.

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

How to Deal With Jargon in "The Barrier"

One of the problems some viewers had with "The Barrier" was the amount of transportation planning jargon I used. I think I've come up with a way to deal with that. I also moved forward with my recreation of the script and creation of new subtitles.

How to Deal With Jargon in "The Barrier"

Some people commented that they didn't understand the jargon I used in the story. I don't want to completely replace the jargon because that would create long complicated descriptions all the time. I also want to avoid injecting "As you know Bob ..." dialogue to explain what the terms mean.

The approach I will try is to have the character Vincent Campbell play dumb. I don't want the character to be dumb. He just plays dumb as a tactic to manipulate people. He would deliberately misunderstand jargon, and force other characters to explain what they mean. There is already an example of this in the movie where Dennis needs to explain what a travel survey is. If I can make Campbell's misinterpretations humorous, that should keep the explanations from sounding too dry.

For example, when Arthur says he is concerned about the trip generation, Campbell's response would be, "Why would anyone care about drugged out old hippies?"

Recreated Script

I have all of the dialogue matched against the captions now. There were quite a few discrepancies I had to fix. Many of them were changes I made to improve pronunciation. There were only a couple of places where I had new dialogue to include.

I still need to add in some more action descriptions. I already did this for the first few scenes. I don't want to over do the action descriptions, because I don't need them for what I plan to do. I think they will help the voice actors understand the situation better.

The script is still in an Excel spreadsheet. For the rewrite this might be OK, but I think I need to convert it to a script format. I'm not so sure how to do that easily.

When I matched the dialogue, I noted some of the places where I want to make changes for the next version of the movie.

Revised Subtitles

When I made some changes to the movie back in 2014, I added some time at the start and so the old subtitles were out of sync. While I worked on the script recreation, I had to bring the old subtitles into the spreadsheet I used. This allowed me to adjust the times when the subtitles are displayed.

I had to work out what the adjustment should be. That took a couple of tries to get right. Although, there is a few places where I still think they might be off. Not by more than a half second though.

You can check out the new subtitles here: http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/the-barrier/

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

Character Changes in "Bright Freedom"

I worked on my novella, "Bright Freedom" this week. My goal was to develop the characters more. I came across some old notes from three years ago. My concept of the story has changed since then.

For the most part , I developed some background for the characters this week. I had thought about the characters before, but I wanted to get my ideas down on paper. I gave some thought to the personalities and motivations of the characters, but much of my effort was to create physical descriptions and behaviours. These, of course, are intended to give clues to their personalities.

This exercise allowed me to reconsider the characters I have in the story. It helps focus the story if I can keep the number of characters to a minimum. I tend to build up the subplots at the expense of my main story.

So far, I have eliminated two characters and combined two others into a single person. I might be able to eliminate another character and combine two other characters into a single character. If I go through with these changes, it will cut the number of characters from 16 to 11. In addition I think I can reduce the importance of a few of the characters so the focus of the story is more on my protagonist, Bright Freedom. I can cut the number of "important" characters from 9 to 6.

The last time I really worked on this story was three years ago. When I started over, I knew I made some notes for changes I wanted to make. I thought I had lost them, but this week I found them. I had some good ideas I can incorporate into the story, but I can't use a lot of the material I came up with. My concept of the story has changed quite a bit.

My plan was to keep this rewrite to a revision of the existing material, but I wonder if I need a more drastic rewrite. One story that comes to mind is about when Robert Louis Stephenson wrote "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". When his wife read his first draft and pointed out how it could be so much better if he gave it more depth, he burned it and started over from scratch. I don't want to go that far.

I think I have what I need to start the actual rewrite, but still feel some reluctance to start.

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

"Bright Freedom" Rewrite: The Hard Part

I've left my story "Bright Freedom" unfinished for a long time. This week I took a stab at a rewrite. I find that the rewrite is harder to do than the first draft.

My first attempt at this story was back in 2010 and early 2011. It was initially a movie script. I didn't plan to make the movie myself, I thought it as more of a learning exercise.

In 2012 I decided to rewrite it as a novelette. My first draft was largely a conversion of the screen play into a prose format. I finished that in July, 2012. I intended to leave it for a few months and then do a rewrite. It is now just a few days short of three years. A lot has happened in my life since then and that affects the way I look at things.

Part of the reason I have struggled with this story is that the main character is a woman of color. Those of you who know me are aware that I have very little experience with being a woman or of color. I worry that I will completely miss the essence of the character, and offend people with a flat stereotype.

On the other hand, in my story "A Walk in the Snow" (http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/a-walk-in-the-snow/), the protagonist was a person of color who had immigrated to Canada. I had some positive responses to that from people who had that experience.

Another challenge for me is that the protagonist is strongly motivated to help victims of domestic abuse. That makes me uncomfortable. In my story I use it as a device to motivate the protagonist rather than as a central part of the theme. My story is a sort of action adventure and I worry that will trivialize the problem. On the other hand, I think I portray the protagonist as someone who work to stop it.

I will definitely need to get some feed back from people who can identify with the protagonist and the problems she faces.

I focussed on the story outline/structure this week. For me, the most important part of the writing is the outline. That, combined with background information, should take up most of the time.

My first step was to create a new outline from the existing text. It turned out that I had already done that some time ago, which saved me some time. Over the last three years I have learned more about plotting a story. I found that useful when I revised the outline. It was easier to see when the story missed something, and where I had material I should cut.

The outline had 43 scenes to start with, and I ended up with 61. I moved some scenes around to where they made more sense. Some scenes will need to be completely redone.

Another problem I noticed was that when I converted the screenplay, I didn't change the tense. For example, the text says "She sits down" when it should say "She sat down." I'll need to go through the story and fix all of those.

Over the last three years I've written a fair number of notes about changes I want to make to the story. Before I go too far, I will want to review those in more detail.

All in all, I have my work cut out from me.

I could use some help to find some people to read a draft of my story. Ideally I need a woman of color who immigrated to Canada and works with domestic abuse victims. So far as I know, I don't know any.

If you can put me in touch with someone who fits this description, I would appreciate it.

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

First Draft of Bright Freedom Done

I finished the conversion of my script Bright Freedom into a story this week. It came in at a little over 17,500 words, which is supposed to be the boundary between a novelette and a novella. It runs 47 pages.

I gave it a quick scan and it was clear that I have a lot more work to do on it. I plan to leave it for a while, and then start a rewrite. I expect I’ll need to do quite a few rewrites.

I think I do have a problem with some of my writing, where I have essentially the same thing happens over and over. I managed to cut out some of that in this story as I rewrote it, but I still need to do some more.

Another mistake I made with this story is that the subplots are too big and left the main story line somewhat thin. I did some analysis of the story and the main story makes up about 70 per cent of the total words, while one subplot is 25 percent and the other about 5 per cent. That isn’t as bad as I thought. The main plot is actually two stories that are so intertwined that I really can’t separate them. I think that is why I felt like my subplots took up too much space. I plan to build up the main plot line more and cut some stuff out of the subplots.

In several scenes, I have the characters talk to each other on the phone. In some cases, I think this makes sense. In others, I think I should change the scene into a face to face meeting.

I noticed that scenes that I thought about quite a bit read much better. The scenes where I didn’t, come across as pretty limp. When I rewrite I think I should just do one scene at a time, and reread it at least a day before to get my mind focussed on it.

Another issue is that I’ve put in descriptions of what the character does while they talk or pause. I did that to break up the dialog, and avoid “he said” and “she said” descriptions. All too often, I have their gestures repeat. I think a lot of that has to come out. I also want to come up with a wider range of gestures, expressions, and actions. I want them to reveal what the characters are thinking, and what they are feeling.

Pierre Berton said that you should read something good before you start to write. I’ve been reading about H. P. Lovecraft, which is a very different kind of material from what I’m trying to do. I need to read a story more like what I’m writing. I can’t really think of any. It’s a little hard to describe what the story is, so it is hard to ask people for suggestions.

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

Committed to Write (Bright Freedom)

I have a bunch of writing projects strewn about undone, so last week I set a goal that I would devote an hour per day writing. I managed to keep it until Thursday. I hope to do better this week.

I wanted to rewrite the Bright Freedom script I wrote into a novel, but hadn’t decided when I would do that. I started on it this week. I got about 2,800 words done. I think it will end up at about 28,000 words, which would make it a novella rather than a novel.

There are some problems with the story and it will need some rewrites. I find that my rewrite still sounds like script directions and not description. In a script you don’t normally describe what people look like, or dress, or behave. You leave that for the actors to develop. In a novella, you can use those descriptions to make the characters more real. It can also be used to create mood. In what I’ve done so far, I haven’t done much of that.

I still need to do some background research on the story. Are the characters believable? I don’t want them to be stereotypes, and, most assuredly, I don’t want them to be offensive stereotypes. I need to find people who have had similar life experiences and get their feedback. I thought that it would be easier if I had a story they could read.

The main character is a woman from a foreign country. I’ve never been a woman. I have visited other countries, but never emigrated to one. While I try to put myself in that mindset, it would be foolhardy of me to assume that I’ve got it right.

At my one hour a day pace, it would take me six weeks to finish the initial rewrite. I expect that I will hit the wall at some points where what I have in the script just isn’t what I want. Part of me wants to just do a straight conversion, while another part wants to rewrite as I go along.

We’ll see how it goes next week.

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