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.

Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival

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The Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival is the first screening of my film, COVID Dystopia  outside of Orlando Florida. Pam and I took the trip to Chicago to attend the festival. The screenings were in a beautiful historic fire house.

In all, 50 short films were screened. I printed up 50 cards with the movie poster on it and only one card was picked up. The buttons I printed with the laurel and the COVID title did much better since 12 of those buttons were picked up. For the next festival I will be printing small url stickers to place on the back of each button. scanning the url symbol would link directly to the film.

There were about 79 people in the theater for the screening of my film titled COVID Dystopia. In my film block there was a film about building schools in Uganda. In the audience was the wife of the man who is spearheading this effort to improve education in his home country. She stood up in the question and answer session and said she was amazed by the quality of the films but some of the films frightened her. I have no doubt she was talking about COVID.

The staff and volunteers that ran the screening were amazing. In one day, Pam and I sat through ten hours of short films in a row. When you see that many shorts in a row, you become thankful for the shorts that are extremely concise.

The only thing I regret about the festival is that there was no opportunity to meet the other film makers. It would have been nice to meet the other film makers in a local bar or restaurant or even a tent outside the theater with a food truck for food.

Seeing my film o the big screen I decided I need to make on change at the beginning. The music came on so strange to start that the sound system couldn’t quite handle it. I will reduce the volume a bit and let it build. All the animation being added helps direct the audience’s eyes but I am sure it is still overwhelming.

Several older ladies came up after the screening to ask more questions about my film. Pam pointed out that the older members of the audience have experienced more and aren’t as likely to fall prey to the amnesia and denial that fuels the “back to normal” mindset of the majority of Americans.

In some ways I feel I am hiding the messaging of my film by only showing it at film festivals. If I shared it on you tube it will become ineligible for many of the larger festivals. I am committed to the festival circuit and hope the film will start to pick up some steam.

Neil Gaiman and Art Spiegelman

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The Friends of the Orange County Library celebrating 100 years of the Orange County Library System sponsored Niel Gaiman in Conversation with Art Spiegalman at the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center. I know Art Spiegalman best for the graphic novel Maus which has been on my book shelves for decades. Niel Gaiman is also a literary genius.

This informal conversation was inspiring and profound. Both authors are advocates for libraries and horrified at the authoritarian need of American legislators to demolish the institutions when they can. Spiegalman’s Maus was banned from school curriculum, but I was pleased to find out that the author profited from the scandal.

The evening was like sitting in at an informal gathering where the authors got to meet again and share stories. Both grew up in the crucible of NYC and worked as journalists and cartoonists. I likes how they both described boiling down the essence of a story so it might fit on the confines of a graphic novel page. Being overly verbose isn’t eh goal but to state the case simply and boldly.

When asked about what it takes to overcome writers block. They both said that what is most needed is to always put in the work, daily and without question. Art never felt Maus would be published. He collected the rejection letters. It was a monster that he had to keep wrestling. It was created despite his reservations.

I had to reschedule a virtual animation class to attend the evening and I am so glad I did. This was a truly inspiring conversation to sit in on.