Multiple Project Update 2022 January 23

I posted a new writing exercise on SoundCloud, worked on my Random Title Generator, and had another look at “The Time Zone”.

“The Metamorphosis of the Sixth Space Traveler.”

At our writing group meeting we each did a piece based on the title “The Metamorphosis of the Sixth Space Traveler.” My story’s description was: On the country's sixth mission to space, the space traveller makes an important discovery.

You can listen to my recording at: https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-metamorphosis-of-the-sixth-space-traveler

Random Title Generator

I got a little more done on my random title generator upgrade. My goal is to have the page list all of the titles generated in a session. I'm still not able to get it to do that, but I've discovered a bunch of ways that don't work.

Vocal Work for My Animated Videos

I have been wanting to find someone to do the female voices for my videos. A woman has offered to try. She lives in a different city, so she asked if we could do it over the internet. I think that we could do that. The only concern for me would be the sound quality. The microphone on most computers is not as good at the one I'm using to record, and the difference in quality may be too noticeable. I will try it out though.

“The Time Zone”

This is a treatment I did back around the time when we switched to standard time last fall. It is a story about a person who travels to a different time zone. I felt discouraged about it and hadn’t worked on it any further. This week the same woman who offered to do the voices for me made some comments about it. She liked the idea. Her comments got me interested in having another go at it. I offered to revise it and share the revised version with the group in two weeks time. I haven't done anything on it yet. I don't have that much time now.

Older Filmmakers Club

We had the first session of the Older Filmmakers Club. We had a good turn out and the feedback I got was positive. I feel good about the progress of the group.

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

Progress on Two New Videos - 2022 January 16

I worked on two more videos based on my writing exercises this week; “The Sad Lady and the Hesitant Father-in-Law” and “The Fortitude of the Adventuresome Husband”.

I recorded those exercises earlier, but I want to get more experience in creating videos in NAWMAL before I embark on my big project.

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-sad-lady-and-the-hesitant-father-in-law

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-fortitude-of-the-adventuresome-husband

I experimented with a different approach to creating a video using NAWMAL. I didn’t keep a detailed record of how long it took me, but I certainly felt that the videos came together faster.

In the past, I built up each scene line by line. I would add a line of dialogue and then set all the actions, movements, and camera setups. I used that approach when I made “The Barrier”, but back then, I was writing the scenes as I created the video. That has some advantages in that I can change the lines as I see how they fit in the scene.

With the videos I’m doing now, I already have the dialogue written, so I lose that advantage. Most of the scenes are quite short; less than a minute each for “The Fortitude of the Adventuresome Husband”.

What I did was to enter all the dialogue text into one dialogue line, then use the split feature to break it into the individual lines. I had to go back and change who was saying each line. That made it easier to import the pre-recorded dialogue. So, very quickly I had a first cut of the scene.

I set up a single camera that showed the entire area of action. Then I added in the physical actions and facial expressions. I had to play around quite a bit with the timing of the actions so that they matched the dialogue. I had to run the animation each time I made a change to check if the timing worked.

My final step was to do the camera set ups. Which, again, involved some trial and error to get the timings right. I tried out a camera move in one scene. Back when I made “The Barrier”, I had tried that in one scene, but couldn’t get it to work. This time it worked quite well.

I’ve put the two videos to the side. After a few days I can look at them again with fresh eyes. That would allow me to see any opportunities for improvements.

The dialogue all comes from the recordings I did earlier for these writing exercises. My “female” voice just doesn’t sound right to me. I used an Audacity plug-in called Rovee to adjust my voice to sound female. It is distinct from my voice. It doesn’t sound all that female to me though.

I have talked to an actor about recording the female voices for me. She said she would like to do it, but I haven’t arranged a recording session with her yet. After I replace my voice with hers, I expect I’ll need to fiddle with the timings again.

After I have that taken care of, I still need to add sound effects and titles before I can call it a day.

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

Two Writing Exercises Posted and the Random Title Generator 2022 January 9

I haven’t been very energetic and productive of late, but I did post a couple writing exercise and work on random title generator.

“The Magnificent River”

Paul wants to see Laura, who is on the opposite side the magnificent river.

This was an exercise I wrote last year. I revised it and posted the text on my website back then. It has haunted me since then, so I decided I should do a recording.

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-magnificent-river

·         https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-magnificent-river/

"The Princess and The Elated Tax Collector"

The princess does not want to pay her taxes. The tax collector has other ideas.

Our script group did a writing exercise at our meeting this week. Later in the week I recorded and posted it.

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-princess-and-the-elated-tax-collector

Random Title Generator

https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/random-title-generator/

I did more work on my random title generator this week. There are two things I want to accomplish for my next release.

My first goal is to expand the options for titles. Currently, the titles are set up with just people as the main noun in the title. I wanted to allow things as the main noun. While I was at it, I expanded the number of articles and adjectives.

I’m not sure the term article is what I should be using, since that usually applies to words “the” and “a.” For example, my articles list includes: “The Strange Tale of a,” “Ask Me About a,” and “Out of the Mist Came the.” I wouldn’t describe these as articles, but I haven’t come up with a more appropriate word.

I also realized that not all of the articles and adjectives made sense for both people and things, so I split them into three groups. The first group made sense for both things and people. The second group made sense for people and not things. The third group made sense for things, but not people. This does complicate the set up of the web page.

The existing title generations can create around 233,000,000 unique titles. If I ever finish the revised version, it will be able to create around 811,000,000 unique titles. Of course, as I noted on the page itself, not all of these will make sense.

My other goal was to display all of the titles that random title generator produced during a session. A major user of the generator suggested that this would be helpful. I had looked into this before, but I was thinking in terms of having a back key that would recall earlier titles. I couldn’t figure out how to do this. I am by no means a Java power user.

However, I realized that setting up the code to display all of the earlier titles would be easier to do. I've been trying to find out how to do that. I haven’t found any examples of code that does this. I looked at on-line Java documentation, but I found it a bit opaque. I can glean enough to realize that it can be done. That doesn’t mean I can do it.

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