Yesterday This Was Home: Winter Park

When the bus arrived in Winter Park, a 16 year old girl boarded. She was heading to Detroit as well. Chatting with a fellow passenger always makes the trip more pleasant.

This was a surprisingly tricky scene which might need more work. The bus was pulled into Adobe Premier Pro as a PNG file which preserve transparency. That means I could move the bus in Premiere and the back ground would appear behind it.

The problem came when I animated the girl turning to watch the bus approach. The animation was simple enough, but compositing her over the bus in Premiere turned out to be a hustle since Callipeg, the animation program doesn’t allow for exporting an entire animation with transparency. If I imported as an MP4 then the background an bus were hidden by the white page the girl was animated on. I could export a PNG movie but only one frame was exported. I ultimately had to export as a JSON file which packed all the elements into a WinRar folder. I then had to import each drawing individually into Premiere Pro and reduce the clip size to 4 frames. This was way more work than it needed to be. On top of that the girl drawings were strangely washed out. I adjusted the brightness in Premiere to compensate but still lines have dropped out. I may need to find another solution. In the mean time I am pushing ahead with another scene.

This is just one example of the myriad of unforeseen issues that come up even on a small production like this.

This short film will be on exhibit at Yesterday This Was Home, at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 E. Central Blvd. Orlando, Florida 32801) This special exhibition will be on display October 3, 2020 – February 14, 2021.

The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.