Berlin Short Film Festival: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

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The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was a stop I felt Pam had to see. This maze of grey granite blocks are hip height at the outer edges but get taller as the ground sinks down in the center of this multiple city block memorial.

Pam wandered off to explore the information center while I sketched. The information center was one of the most impressive exhibition we had seen in Berlin.

It was a grey day and it had been raining all morning. Groups of tourists would gather at the outer periphery of the memorial before walking into the stone maze. Green moss has already started to grow on the shady side of the blocks. I limited my view to maybe one eighth of the memorial. When My sketch was done, I texted Pam multiple times but she wasn’t getting reception since she was under ground.

I decided to wander inside the memorial. It was fairly bright as I walked down a single row. I limited myself to the single row so I could walk back and sit under the pine tree which is where Pam would know I was sketching.

Deeper down the row it grew darker. The morning rain left long streaks of moisture dripping down each column. The drops slid downward like tears. Some tourists had run their fingers through the moisture creating horizontal meandering trails. You couldn’t see it others were walking perpendicular to your path so I would pause at each corner and glance down the rows that ran east and west. When I returned to my sketching spot, a family sat beside me. The children ran up and down the aisles playing hide and seek.

Pam found a spot with reception and she suggested I meet her at the information center. The exhibits were brutal and overwhelming. One room was full of the storied of families. A large photo should show the whole family and then there was a panel that showed what happened to each person in the photo. More often than not, the epitaph would read murdered in Treblinka or Dachau or any number of other death camps. A few did survive in hiding or by escaping the country. Their stories were also corroborated with primary sources. The Nazi’s kept precise documentation.

One small boy lost both his parents to disease in a ghetto and then his three brothers and sister were deported and murdered at death camps. The boy had to endure medical experiments but he ultimately survived the torture.

Berlin Short Film Festival: Belushi’s

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Pam and I traveled to Berlin for the Berlin Short Film Festival. Our first stop after a grueling 12 hour flight was the Saint Christopher Hostel which is just a block from the historic Babylon Theater. On the ground floor of the hostel is Belushi’s bar. Several hostel residents were finishing breakfast as we arrived. We wanted to check our bags in early and start exploring the city. There are lockers for bags but the lockers were coin operated and we didn’t have any European currency yet. Pam found a Deutche bank on Google maps and left me in Belushi’s to watch the bags. She was doing me a favor because it was rainy and miserable 0utside.

This became my first opportunity to sketch in Germany. I managed to finish this sketch before Pam got back. International flags lined the walls and a Kansas City neon sign was hidden behind several flags. The Super Bowl would be happening in a couple of days and the bartender was lining the bar with American flags for the occasion. Every night Beluchi’s was packed with drinkers watching large screen TVs that mostly featured soccer matches.

Pam and I went to the DDR Museum on day one. This museum shows what life was like in Eastern Berlin when the Berlin wall was in place. My biggest take away was that they had some very loud wallpaper back in those days. On attraction was a huge elevator that lurched and flickered dark when the button was pushed. Maybe it was just a faulty elevator but it was terrifying. Far worse than the tower of terror. There as also a jail cell, office and basic apartment settings. In the kitchen Pam found that she could print out several recipes, so she might be experimenting with some eastern block food in the coming weeks.

It was raining and cold for every day of our stay. Naked tree limbs were cut, off and the rain made the cold seep deep under every layer of our winter clothes.

COVID Dystopia: Mass Grave, Closed Captions

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COVID Dystopia has been accepted into a prestigious film festival that is Oscar qualifying. When I read the e-mail, I thought it was a prank. I can’t name the festival until March 8 when the film festival program is fully lined up. On a tight deadline, I need to add closed captions to the film and make a 2K DCP file that is used for the high quality theater projectors. Once I have the DCP file, I can use it for future film festivals. The problem is that I keep refining scenes. Those refinements are very small at this point however.

Another film festival near Ukraine expressed interest in the film, saying the already viewed it and wanted it for their program. There is no guarantee that the judges will put it in the program however, and I am wondering if it is an excuse to get me to pay the 30% reduced application fee.

I had created captions on youTube once, and the process was pretty easy, but I pulled that version of the film down so that COVID Dystopia can only be seen at film festivals. Now I need to create captions in Premiere Pro so that the film can be shown with captions or without. I think the closed captions can be exported as a separate file from the movie file itself. Since I have never done this before I have a steep learning curve over the next couple of days.

I have seen closes captions that have a dark field behind them on youTube. I am wondering if that is needed for my captions. In the scene above the captions are easy to read when they are in front of the casket shadows, but harder to read in front of the hazmat suit.

I am also wondering if I am supposed to type out sound effects in closed captions. I need to do a Google search to find the best solution. I have seen cations animate on as the words are said and that might be a solution. I just need to figure out how to do that.

Pam said she would help me create the DCP file. It is apparently an expensive file to create. I read once that it coast about $200, but again I am not sure.

COVID Dystopia: Unemployment

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With millions dead and millions disabled due to Long COVID, businesses are having trouble finding able bodies workers. The animation in this scene works fine. I could animate someone in the background pulling their mask down, but that would be overkill.

Today COVID Dystopia will screen at the Babylon Theater in the Berlin Short Film Festival. It will not be shown on the large screen in the historic 1920s theater, but on a smaller screen in the back of the theater next to the orchestra rehearsal room.

Charlie Chaplin‘s Modern Times will be shown on the big screen with a live orchestra. I would really like to see that screening but it will be happening at the same time my film will be shown. Pam and I have explored much of East Berlin already and we will be heading to the Museum Island for a day of exploring the museums before going to the film festival tonight.

 

COVID Dystopia: Fun Spot

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The animation on this Fun Spot scene seems to work as it is. When I uploaded a recent edit of the film onto Film Freeway, I discovered a slew of scenes that ended up cropping incorrectly. Black bars appear on the right side of the screen. I am going through the whole film to try and catch each and every one of these glitches.

I have been viewing the film mostly in the Premiere Pro program. In that program the film plays against a dark field. With that dark field I didn’t notice the dark glitches. It was only when watching the film on Film Freeway, that I noticed the glitches. Film Freeway plays the film against a light tan filed and the black bars suddenly became obvious. I have also been watching the film on a tiny laptop screen.

I didn’t notice the glitches when the film played on a large screen at the Chicago International Reel Shorts Film Festival. That is because the theater was dark and the glitches would have been less obvious. Anyway, now I am on the case.

80th Birthday Celebration

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The trailer I rented in Goose Creek, South Carolina was just 10 minutes from my sister’s daughter’s home. This 80th Birthday Celebration was planned months ago. All the Thorspecken siblings arrived at the same time. I immediately sat on the living room couch and started sketching. I didn’t know how long I might have before my sister arrived. My hope was to block in the composition and then add people as they sat down.

A scout was sent upstairs to look out a window down the street to watch for my sister’s car so everyone could hide before she walked in. My sister was fashionably late which meant I was finished blocking in the room before she arrived. I decided to stop sketching and join everyone in the kitchen. My sketch and art bag were hidden with a fluffy couch pillow.

I had decided to draw the center table set up in the living room. It turns out no one ever sat at that table. In my sketch, my sister is visible straight ahead of me. You can identify her with the pony tail. All the Thorspeckens were seated in the dining room.

When the food arrived, I sat outside and almost choked to death on a hunk of sausage, but I survived. After I recovered and finished the pasta on my plate I went back inside. The sausage I left alone. I got to sit in on a good hour of family conversation before the football game was turned on in the living room.

In the living room I got to site with my sister for a while and we talked about family history. She had a good lead on a Thorspecken who had an import export business in NYC back in the 1840 or so. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery and I want to look him up. I might be going up to New York City in a week or so with Pam and I could gather research sites I should visit. One problem I want to pursue in person is to visit all the Catholic Churches near where my Irish relatives lived in NYC about 1870. My hope is to find a baptism for my great great grandfather. My hope is to fin the records if I pay for the time spent researching.

 

Ophelia

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Ophelia is an original musical being presented at Fringe Art Space by Phoenix Tears Productions. The show re-imagines the story of Hamlet from the vantage point of his love, Ophelia. So what do you do when your boyfriend, the Prince of Denmark goes completely mad? I am sure this is a question many a young woman has had to ask herself.

The many facets of Ophelia’s personality are represented by a group of women who are actually flowers. Violet, represents her innocence and love of life, whereas Fennel represents her dark brooding moods. In all seven flowers represented her split personalities.

Laura Powalisz did a good job as the demure Ophilia. Megan Markham performed as rather funny drunk yellow flower. In a play within the play Megan sang a fast paced rap while the goth Lex Bentley head banged to the beat. Lex also had me laughing with an over the top performance as the ghost who haunted Hamlets dad. This might be a spoiler, but, Carson Holly as Violet had a stunning performance when she collapsed on stage. She was still for so long that I started to wonder how she could control her breath so well.

Ophelia had so much she could have learned from the multiple floral personalities but in the end she kept a blind faith in her love and when madness prevailed she gave up on life. Pam noticed that throughout the play Ophelia wore different colored belts. White for innocence and in the end black for mourning. When focusing on a sketch I can miss such subtleties. A carving on the three isn’t meant to represent water, H20 but Hamlet + Ophelia. In the end that carving was hacked out and marred.

Some of the musical numbers were quite passable while others could use further rehearsals. I admire that local production companies are taking such bold chances.

COVID Dystopia: Rebound Animation

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I decided the rebound shot needed animation in Callipeg. As it was, I just dropped the virus into the shot and the player were held cells.Adding a depth map didn’t add much to the shot. It was boring. Do I am adding full motion to the players. The ball end up where it is in the illustration on the last frame. I need to have the ball rotate after it leaves the players hand.

The drawings for the player taking the shot are complete and today I need to add the defender who fails to block the shot. All this happens in 25 frames. I was going to export the final animation with a green screen but I might instead import all the lightning animation frames into this shot.

Painting the players should be fun with the rim light from the lightning flashes. In most of the other shots I reused painted elements to save time, but in this shot everything moves so fast that I can probably repaint every frame.

This is becoming one of my favorite shots in the film. I am glad am digging in and improved on what I had.

COVID Film: Firenado Final

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This is the final result I settled on for the fore tornado. It look more than half a day to accomplish with much experimentation. What can’t be seen in this still shot are the flames licking upward and the funnel spinning around the flames. The fire is done with displacement fractal noise and lots of glows.

The tornado had a particle generated center, but I abandoned that attempt. I had to try every variation of blending mode to get just the right amount of fire visible through the spinning clouds. I figure out how to use a gradient map to fade away the top of the tornado into the clouds.

The balloons were separated from the background and all the clouds now spin around the tornado. I also painted a smear of a cloud at the top of the tornado and added displacement to that to get it to spin like the other clouds. Volume was added to the balloons with a depth map but that effects is subtle. I probably could accomplish far more depth in the balloons if I separated them into three separate planes. I decided the extra work wouldn’t be worth it. The shot is over in just over a second.

COVID Film: Zeros Fire displacement

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I spent the day working on the flames in this Pearl harbor scene in After Effects. After tweaking the three largest flames I discovered that I could cut more mattes with the pen tool and fore instantly cropped up in the new locations.  I kind of wish I could get the flames to lick a bit more to the right but since the scene is so short I doubt anyone will will notice how upward they are.

These fires are all created with displacement maps, mattes, and expressions for some minor animation. I am learning as I go and I might return to the scene when I learn more about how to create natural movement to the flames. I am resisting using stock flames with alpha channels that are sold online. Each scene with flames with either be hand animated or created with displacement maps like this scene.

What I learned form this scene was instantly applied to a scene that I thought might take forever. The scene is in a super crowded bar and everyone is on fire. I managed to finish most of those flames in two hours. I am gradually combining different techniques to solve the problems that are unique to each scene.