“Time Change” Revision and a New Video

I worked on my “Time Change” treatment, and I think I have finished a new video based on one of my writing exercises.

Time Change

I promised to revise my treatment for "Time Change" for the next script group session. I won’t be getting that done in time.

I started to make notes for the changes I want to make. Very quickly, it was obvious that the changes were more involved than I had thought. While I won't have the rewrite done, I plan to clean up my notes and share them.

There were two main problems I’ll need to resolve. The first problem is that the reason I had the protagonist going there didn't make sense. The second problem was that the reason the bad guys asked him to come had to have some link to their nefarious scheme. I had identified one scheme they had, which is the original idea behind the story, but I think they have to have something beyond that. I'm stuck for ideas.

"The Fortitude of the Adventurous Husband"

This was a writing exercise I did last November. I did a recording of it at the time but wanted to redo it as a video. I did a version of it using NAWMAL a couple weeks ago using the recording I did for the voices.

I was not happy with the woman’s voice that I did. For a while I’ve wanted to find an actor to do the female voices for my videos. A woman in the writer's group volunteered to record the woman's voice. She lives in another city, so we couldn’t meet in person to do it.

We decided to try recording her over ZOOM. That worked OK, despite some technical issues. The desktop computer I use for recording doesn’t have a video camera, so I had to look onto ZOOM with both my desktop and iPad. Being logged in on two devices was the primary challenge. I had to turn the speakers off on the desktop computer or else I got a lot of feedback. I used Audacity for the recording.

The actual recording went fairly smoothly. I had read some where that now a days when recording for voice work, they have the actor working on their own and have them do the same line several times with different readings each time. I often do this on my own recordings but is usually because I misread the lines I wrote.

One issue I was worried about was that the microphones on the computers are not the same quality as the one I use for my recording. When I listened to it afterwards, I could tell that we had recorded the two voices with different microphones. The two voices themselves are quite different, so I'm not sure if people who watch the video will notice.

I split the lines from the new recording and then replaced the recordings in the NAWMAL file. That went fairly quickly. I had to make a few timing adjustments so that the action and sound would match the older version. While I was at it, I made a few other changes in the NAWMAL file.

In NAWMAL I had 4 separate files for the four scenes in the video. I combined these using Premiere Pro. I have an old version from about 10 years ago. I added some sound effects, mostly footsteps. I also added an echo when they were in the cave. Then I added the titles and credits. I will leave it for a few days and then have another look and decide if I want to make more changes.

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

The ZOOM Bomber – Update 5

I completed the story board for "The ZOOM Bomber". I have started to ask for feed back on the story. Based on what I hear back, I will decide where to go with the story.

I got quite energetic a couple weeks ago and finished off the story board in just a couple of days. Since then I’ve been asking people for their opinions before I decide on my next move.

I posted a video of the story board on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jePgb298O_k

If you have the time and inclination, I would like to hear what you think of it.

Production

I used WonderUnit’s Storyboarder 2.01 for most of the story board. For the most part I found it easy to use but struggled when I tried to create custom body positions. I think if I used it for longer, I would eventually develop amore skill at it. I got feedback that the characters lacked facial expression. Storyboarder does have a sketch tool that would allow you to add facial features, but I lack the artistic skills to do that.

I found it took me a long time to create the background in Storyboarder, so I used other tools to do the backgrounds.

I took some photographs and then used https://www.cartoonize.net/ to create more abstract images for the backgrounds. I used ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5 to modify some of the images as well – both before and after cartoonizing. I used Blender 2.79 to create the escape across the roof top.

I used Microsoft PowerPoint to combine the various image elements into each story board image. I also used it to add the character labels.

I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 to compile the individual images into a video story board. I overlay the images on a blank ZOOM page in Premiere Pro.

I added some dialogue and sound effects to finish off the storyboard.

I used some text to speech voices, David, Zira, and Hazel, which were available in Windows 10, for the dialogue. These voices do lack some character, so I would likely want to have actors do the voices if I were to do a revised version.

I used some free sound effects from SoundEffectsPlus.com and SoundBible.com. I also created some of my own sound effects. I used Audacity 2.3.2 to modify some sound effects.

Thoughts about making the Movie

The video turned out to be much more violent and brutal than I feel comfortable with. That said, I am not ready to abandon the project. Part of the reason I want feedback is to gauge if I am too squeamish.

I have given some though about how to shoot the movie.

First off, I think that for most of the characters I should look for people with martial arts training. I worry a lot about safety issues and would feel better if I worked with people who did this kind of thing on a regular basis. Also, when I think about safety, I would like to use sets with padded floors.

For the escape scenes, where you don’t see the characters, but rather their point of view, I think I could use a small camera drone. My sense is that would also be cheaper. I would certainly want to do this with the roof top scene. I am not so sure about how to do the crash through the window. For some of the other escape scenes I think a camera mounted on a stunt person would be safe enough.

I want the movie to come across as if it happened in real time, but I would like to shoot most of it in short segments. This make sense for the scenes with Scarlet, and Hunter. I would shoot those in probably 6 or 7 separate segments. I would combine those and then shoot Mother’s piece as she reacted to the pre-recorded video.

Feedback Request

Again, I want to get a sense of how people react to the video before I decide my next move. If you have the time and inclination, I would like to hear what you think of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jePgb298O_k

Thank you.

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

"The ZOOM Bomber" – Update 2

I got some more feedback on "The ZOOM Bomber" this week. I made some revisions to the script and worked on the story board.

The script has a fight scene, and I am by no means a fighter, so I asked a friend of mine who used to train in fighting to review my script. She had some useful comments on the fight scenes. I made some revisions to the script based on that. The scene is brief, so there were not a lot of changes to make. It is a more realistic fight now.

I did some more work on the story board. I only got about 3 more done, but I did give some more thought to what direction I want to go. I worked out a list of images I still need create, and it came out at over 60. I’ve got 8 done so far.

One thing I am thinking about doing is to make more use of photographs for the storyboard. Creating environments from scratch can be time consuming. I also experimented with carbonifying the photographs, so they match the image quality of the rest of the elements in the storyboard.

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

"The ZOOM Bomber" – Update 1

A few weeks ago, my script writer’s group challenged me to write a script about a ZOOM meeting. At first, I didn’t see any point in that, but then I came up with an interesting concept.

My working title is "The ZOOM Bomber".

I started, then stopped, then started again. Eventually I had a first draft. I left it a couple of days and did a revision. I was worried that I may have gone too far with the violence in the story. I do have a couple of fight scenes. We'll see what people think. I've passed it to a few people for comments. Once I get some feedback, I'll do another revision.

I didn’t intend to do anything further with the script. I do plan to post a final revision on my website, but I can't see myself making the film. I don't feel up to finding someone else to make it.

However, I started to feel inspired to investigate maybe doing something more with it. At one of our script group sessions we talked about some major companies do animated storyboards to see how a movie plays.

I did something like that with "The Barrier" using Xtranormal. I don't think Nawmal would work with this story because of the fight scenes (https://www.nawmal.com/). I found a story board program on-line that I am trying out: https://wonderunit.com/storyboarder/. It doesn't animate, just creates a series of still images, but I think that might do for now. It has been a bit of a challenge to start using it. I did get the first sequence of the story done. I can move on to the rest.

I used some artificial voices to create the dialogue. They aren't licenced for commercial use, so if I want to post the result on-line, I'll need to find another way to do the dialogue. I know some actors and maybe I can get them to do it as a test. That is something I would like to try out anyway.

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