“If I Knew . . .” on Vimeo

A little while ago, I read an article about Vimeo: Why Vimeo Is the Web Video Platform to Watch. The article makes the case that Vimeo is the place to go for people who want to make or watch videos that are more creative.

The site has a reputation for a more sophisticated and supportive community. After my experiences with some of the people who comment on YouTube, that is appealing. See my article Why Do People Hate my Film? I think people there are more likely to enjoy my work than many of the people on YouTube.

I have had a Vimeo account for a while now, but hadn’t posted any public videos. This article prompted me to try it out, so I posted If I Knew . . . this week. http://vimeo.com/44342621

So far, it hasn’t drawn any attention on Vimeo, but I think I will eventually post all of my videos there. If you haven’t seen If I Knew . . . yet, have a look and let me know what you think of it.

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

Bright Freedom and Voice Recognition

I decided that my next project would be to complete the rewrite of my Bright Freedom script into a novella. I’ve written quite a few notes, but I haven’t done any actual writing.

Most of my notes I wrote in my notebook, and I wanted to transcribe them into computer files. I decided to try out the Windows voice recognition feature. Some years ago, I used Dragon Naturally Speaking some years ago. At the time, I had some trouble with painful wrists and typing was difficult. I found it worked well enough, without too many typos. I also felt it made my writing flow better.

When I got a new computer, back in 2007, I couldn’t install Dragon on it. I knew Windows had voice recognition, but I didn’t have a good microphone, so I didn’t try it out. We have a good microphone now, so I went ahead and tested it. I’ve got most of my notes transcribed now.

The system works OK, but the program does need some more training. Or may be I’m the one who needs to learn to speak more clearly.

Bright Freedom is a challenge for me to write. First off, the main character is a woman, and I’ve never been a woman, so I have no experience to draw on. Second, the subject of the story is a topic that makes me uncomfortable. Partly it is because I know little about it and need to do more research. The subject is controversial and I need to be careful not to make the story too trivial. Controversial is bad enough without also being offensive.

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

Sharkbiter Goes Viral! Well, at Least It Looked Like it for a Day

Make ‘em Squirm - The Sharkbiter Way had 94 views on June 10, 2012, which is much more than my last video, Extra Special Care which had just 14. That is nothing like some of my other videos. Who Shot the President had over 5,000 views before I took it down, while Weekend in Calgary had 905 and The Fence had 595.

I did a fair bit of promotion of the video at the start of the week, but then household chores sidetracked me for a few days. When I go back to it Thursday, I saw that the number of views dropped off to two views the day after I stopped my promotion. Then the next day it jumped to 15, and the day after to 45. I thought that it might be going viral. But, the next day it dropped back down to two views.

It looks like some people look at my other videos after they watch Make ‘em Squirm. I think that it may make sense to post My Next Film on YouTube as well. Like Make ‘em Squirm, it is humorous (or at least I tried to make it funny). That could help get a few more followers.

I plan to do some more promotion and I hope to get more people will watch it. To start, I beg you to tell your friends, and any complete strangers you happen to meet, to go watch it.

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

Sharkbiter Update 2012 June 3

My new video Make ‘em Squirm - the Sharkbiter Way has been on YouTube for four days now. I got a lot of positive feedback, and no negative feedback. Some people shared the video, which is what you need to get more people to watch it. If you haven’t seen it yet, please have a look. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-9y-Bf6abU

One commenter asked when I would post another interview. I thought of this as a stand-alone project and had no plans for a follow up. If there is a lot of interest in the video, then I really should do a sequel. The challenge is that I’d need to come up with a character that is just as interesting. I’ve worked on the Orville Sharkbiter character for 14 years now. Maybe I can come up with a different video featuring Orville.

My plan was to work on a video based on The Crying Woman, which is a very different from Sharkbiter. I worry that if this video does generate a lot of interest in my work, that if I post something too different, people would lose interest in my work. I haven’t posted My Next Film anywhere yet. I meant it to be funny, like Sharkbiter. I haven’t done anything with it since my distribution agreement with Ouat Media ended.

I want to get as many people to see Make ‘em Squirm - the Sharkbiter Way as I can. If you have any ideas about how to promote it, please let me know. If you know anyone who’d like it, please pass the link on to them.

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

New Movie “Make ‘em Squirm - The Sharkbiter Way” Now On-line

I’ve posted my new video, Make ‘em Squirm - The Sharkbiter Way, on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-9y-Bf6abU

An interview with Orville Sharkbiter about his new book Make 'em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way. Orville Sharkbiter is a very successful man, but I wouldn’t want to work for him.

Please have a look at it, and if you know anyone who may appreciate it, pass it along to them.

This movie is quite different from what I’ve done in the past.

I created this video with Xtranormal Desktop, http://www.xtranormal.com/, a program that allows users to create animated movies quite easily. I wanted to test the program to see if I could use it to plan my live action movies. I am very happy with the result.

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

New Movie “Make ‘em Squirm - The Sharkbiter Way” Almost Ready

My new movie, Make ‘em Squirm - The Sharkbiter Way is almost ready to go. The project progressed well this week. I went through several revisions of the dialogue and action. Each time I needed to make fewer and fewer changes. That was a good sign. As a final touch, I added some music and titles.

For a while now, I’ve wondered if I really should do this film. It is not like what I’ve done in the past. I worried that maybe I went too far with the idea. I posted a preliminary version on-line and asked a few people review it. Two people got back to me so far and both thought it was good.

I did most of the work on the movie in Xtranormal Desktop, but I added the titles in Premiere Pro. Xtranormal takes a long time to render the movie: nearly two hours for a nine-minute movie. I had a couple minor changes I wanted to make near the beginning of the movie, but didn’t want to re-render the whole movie. Instead, I created a second, shorter, movie with just the section I wanted to change. Then I cut it into the movie.

The time it takes to render a movie is a problem. I have to redo the whole movie to see the effect of some minor changes. Maybe I need to get a newer, faster computer. I bought the one I have back in 2007, so it is almost five years old. Ancient in computer years.

Even with a faster computer, I think it makes sense to work on the movie in shorter chunks and then stitch them together. This movie is a single scene, but most movies have scenes that run two to three minutes. That is a more manageable piece of work.

I wanted to add a little music at the opening and closing of the film. I found a website where you can download music that is in the public domain http://www.musopen.org. I found a Bela Bartok piece, Roumanian Dance #1 that I liked. The site says that all the music is free to anyone who wants to use it, even if it is in a for profit movie. Bela Bartok’s music from this period are in the public domain. The person who performed and uploaded the music says that his recording is public domain as well. All the same, I want to contact him and make sure that he is OK with the way I used it. I haven’t managed to contact him yet.

Update 2012 May 31: The musician agreed to let me use his music.

I have a couple of other changes I want to make before I’m ready to release it. When I’m done, I’ll post it on YouTube. I've signed up for the revenue sharing program on YouTube. The Xtranormal licence allows that. If I want to sell it though, I need to get a commercial licence. That is fairly expensive, compared to what I’ve paid so far. I may do that when I think I can make the money back.

I should post the final version by the end of the week. If you would like to see the preliminary version and give me some feedback, please get in touch.

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

“Sharkbiter” File Conversions 2012 May 20

I made a little progress on my Sharkbiter video this week. It has taken longer than I’d hoped. There are far too many things to distract me. I got a new version done, but I’ll need to do at least one revision before I’m done. I’ve done five so far.

I made some substantial changes to the script for the latest version. I also did more with the facial expressions and gestures. I think they make the video more interesting to watch.

The video takes nearly an hour to render, so it is hard to check up on minor changes. I need to create the whole thing before I can see what effect any changes have. The final video comes in at about 9 minutes.

Another problem I’ve run into is that since I need to make work with the whole video at once, I need to keep good notes of what changes I make. The first time I did that, I had to watch the video though a couple of times and modify my script to match. The program doesn’t allow you to output the text as a script.

However, I found out that I could open up the data file the program uses, access the text directly, and transfer it to my script-writing program (Celtx) without much difficulty.

The dialogue is in the .state file, which is actually a compressed .zip file with several files that contain the information for the video. I renamed the .state file as a .zip file and opened it up with Winzip. One of the files inside, document.xml, contains the dialogue.

I opened document.xml in Excel and deleted all the items except the character names and dialogue. Next, I changed the xml code to match the html codes used in the Celtx file. I think I could set up an xml style to do that instead.

The Celtx file, like the .state file, is a compressed .zip file. Two files contain two different versions of the script. script-TF1.html has an older version and script-TF1-1.html contains the most recent version. I just cut and pasted the edited dialogue I got from the document.xml file. Finally I rezipped the file and renamed it.

This approach seemed to work fine. I could open the new file in Celtx and it looked OK. I’m sure that there are some nuances to the files that I haven’t picked up on. I’m sure I’ll find out about them later. I think the conversion could be done the other way too.

If you’ve found an easier way to do this, let me know about it.

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