COVID Dystopia: I Watched from a Distance

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In this shot the sculptor leans forward to perfect a tiny detail in his living room sand sculpture. This scene is of course based on a scene in First Encounters where the protagonist suddenly feels the urge to sculpt Devils Tower Butte in his living room. Such an obsession put a strain on his relationship since his wife and children were sure he was going mad. Such a strain exists inn my own life since COVID Dystopia points out that the shy is falling although people have been sold on the idea that life has returned to normal.

So for now, this crazy artist is looking for an apartment which will become the studio where work continues. I have started contacting theaters again to start sketching rehearsals for productions. As production winds down, I am searching for my bearings to figure out what is next in my artistic journey. I suspect I am loosing a best friend in part because I remain steadfastly COVID cautious.

COVID Dystopia: Descended on Your Town

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This is the first illustration I did for the COVID Dystopia series. It appears in the film about a quarter of the way in. I decided it worked well with Andy’s lyrics, “I was there when the end of days descended on your town.” It was actually one of the first scenes I worked into the timeline of the film structure. The two foreground figures in hazmat suits pivot as they are moving a body bag. All the other figures are held cells and I think that works fine.

Today is the day that I should be getting the Digital Cinema Package which I then will need to ship off to the film festival that has yet to be named. I haven’t heard back about any technical issues which is hopefully a good thing. I was considering reworking every scene, all 200 of them to get the timing to 24 frames per second. I am hoping that the technicians have faced this timing issue before and there will be no problem with the final DCP. Eventually Ii will need to make another DCP since there are audio corrections that slipped through because there was no time for me to get changes made.

Besides adding finishing touches to the film, I will be searching for an apartment to rent in the coming months, which will cause quite a shuffle before I head off to the next film festival. I was thinking about it this morning as I woke up. So long as I find a place to sit my laptop and iPad, along with some sort of table and my art stool, I will be fine to continue working. In terms of sketching, I can set up anywhere. I am a tumble weed again. Besides looking for a place in Orlando to start, I am also considering NYC and LA long term. I have to think back to my days when I rode my bicycle across the country. As long as I keep peddling and moving forward, I will make progress. I am just not sure of the destination.

COVID Dystopia: Insignificant protest.

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I am waiting to two audio adjustments from COVID Dystopia before I submit a fender of my film for the online version of the next film festival I was accepted to.On problem is that Mike Pence is clapping far too loud in one scene whee he is watching a choral superspreader event.

The other problem was an explosion that was mistimed. A Japanese Zero is dropping a COVID shaped bomb and I had the audio with a whistling sound as the bomb dropped. The sound technician held off on using the sound until the next shot. I felt uncomfortable each time the explosion happened and I finally played it in slow motion to figure out what was wrong. When Andy Matchett heard the explosion sound in surround sound, he said “that’s interesting” or something along those lines. He must have also suspected that something was off.

Those two refinements are coming in next week and then I will send the film off to the festival. Unfortunately the two problems remain in the surround sound mix, since there was no time to check things and make changes. The next Digital Cinema Package will be better. I suspect between now and then I will be adding more animation as well.

Today I will be scrolling through each sound effect to make sure nothing else is off.

COVID Dystopia: Meat Packing Health

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Listening to the Surround Sound version of the audio for COVID Dystopia was a thrill. There are things I would like to change but there is no time. I had to render the film and send it off to CineSent to get the Digital Cinema Package made so I can get it to the film festival.

Uploading the film onto the CineSent site took forever. The window said it was encoding and check back in a minute. That minute took hours and I finally decided to go to bed and hope the file had uploaded by then.

This morning the file was ready and I sent it off to be made into a DCP. There are tech issues with my film that I hope they can resolve. I animated the entire film at 29.97 frames per second. Cinema projectors only work at 24fps. 25fps or 30 fps. I suspect they will make my film run at 30fps which will speed it up slightly. I don’t know if that will effect the sound track.

I converted one shot to 24fps in the Premiere Pro timeline and the shot played in slow motion. I am wondering if I will need to eventually go through every shot and change the fps to 24 and also change the speed of the clips to get it back to the speed I animated them at. If there are problems at the  lab making the DCP I assume I will hear from them. Choices made on the first day of production are coming back to haunt me now. Should I decide to make another animated film I would do so many things differently. I will only find out how the DCP plays on the first week of April when COVID Dystopia plays on the big screen.

Rhino Head Turns

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Since I have several days while the surround sound audio is being remixed, I decided to add another bit of animation at the start of the film. This scene, set in a dark theater already has a man in an n95 mask turning to look at the camera. I decided the rhinos on either side of him might turn their heads to look at him.

The real trick of this scene will be to get the heads painted so that they blend well with the existing rhino art work. If the paint flickers and crawls too much it will be distracting. I am going to spent the entire day working on these 15 or so cells to try and get them to blend in. The bodies will remain as held cells.

I will need to re-render the film when the surround sound audio mix comes in. There are literally thousands of choices that need to be made to get a render to work. It is not as simple as pressing a button. I wrote down all the settings that worked to get the last several renders of the mp4 movie file. Yesterday I added the credit for the sound designer who is doing the surround sound work. I tried to render the film but the render failed. Vertical lines appeared on the scenes and randomly some scenes would crop incorrectly.

I am not going to worry about it right now. I will tackle that technical issue tonight. I am hoping that my shutting down the computer last night might have corrected the issue. If not, I have lots of research to do and lots of experimenting with new settings.

The only thing different about the movie right now is that cations were added. Perhaps I will need to render the movie without captions. When sending the movie off to the lab to make the Digital Cinema Projection file, it is possible to send the captions as a separate file. That might be what I need to do. The captions can be distracting when each shot is less than a second in duration anyway. People can either read the captions, or watch the film. They can’t do both. Captions only make sense after repeated viewings.

Today is going to be nerve wracking. I hope the audio works and everything falls in place in time.

Berlin Cathedral

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It was another rainy day in Berlin. I decided I should sketch the Berlin Cathedral. Since it was raining, I needed some cover, so I sat on the upper steps of the Altes Museum, leaning back against a large Corinthian column. The Altes Museum is dedicated to displays of Greek and Roman artifacts. Pam and I had been through the museum the previous day. The museum was closed on Monday when I was sketching.

The sketching location wasn’t perfect. Large drops of water occasionally dripped off the top of the column and splashed on the iPad screen. There was also a fine mist which moistened everything. I discovered that the Apple Pencil didn’t always work on the wet screen. I had to keep wiping the screen on my belly to dry it off.

The sculpture in the foreground was of a woman about to spear a lion that was attacking her horse. You can’t really see the ion in my sketch and I left off the lions tail since it looked like another horse leg from this angle. The title of the sculpture is Löwenkämpfer or lion fighter by Albert Wolff.

I worked rather fast since it was rather cold for my hands and I didn’t want the iPad to short out from getting rained on. I have the pad in a protector with a fold over screen. I realized that if I reversed the position of the iPad in the folder, I could use the screen to block much of the rain.

The cathedral and the museum I was seated at are on what is referred to as Museum island. Also on the island are the Bode Museum, Pergamon Museum, Neue Museum, Alte National Museum, and the Humbolt Forum. Pam and I visited many of them.

There was a large cylinder shaped building just on the opposite bank of the river across from the Pergamon. Inside was a 5 story high mural that was just stunning. The mural is a 360 degree panorama created by Yadegar Asisi. It doesn’t look painted but rather must be assembled from large digital photos. Regardless of how it was created it is an impressive sight. The light changes showing the time of day and fires burn at a sacrificial alter. Goats are slaughtered in the street. I think this impressed me the most of everything we saw in the museums.

Pam and I also arrived first thing in the morning the next day to climb to the top of the cathedral. You can walk all around the rim of the dome and see full panoramic views of the city. Pam chugged up the steps effortlessly but I had to take my time since I have been studio bound for some time. I did get to the top with lots of huffing and puffing.

Berlin Short Film Festival: Babylon Theater

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Pam and I walked up to the Babylon Theater lobby on the evening COVID Dystopia was to be screened at about 6Pm in the Berlin Short Film Festival. There were lines of people crushing into the theater. The Babylon is a gorgeous movie theater build back in 1929. It can seat close to 500 people. The organizers had informed us by e-mail that they would supply 2 complimentary tickets to the screening. We were told to meet them in the lobby to pick them up. Rowan and Claudine were at the reception desk. We had purchased tickets for the previous evening’s film block, so they welcomed us with a shout of “Hello Florida.”

Films in the Berlin Film Festival are not screened in the large historic theater but in a much smaller theater in the back called Kino 2 that seats just about 80 people. For some reason, Pam decided to walk around to the back theater entrance and I was to pick up the tickets. Claudine gave me a single ticket and said, “We sold out the seats, unfortunately we can only give your one ticket.” I took the single ticket and went out back to look for Pam. My thought was I would give her the ticket and I would wander off to sketch somewhere. I couldn’t find Pam. She wasn’t at the small Kino 2 entrance.

Another film maker and Pam eventually came to the back entrance with Claudine. They had been arguing in the lobby. Michele Meek, the director of a cure LGBT Short Film titled Bay Creek Tennis Camp, had also flown all the was from America to see her film on the back room screen. She was furious, but in some was pleased that the theater was a full house. The film festival organizers had made a horrendous mistake in offering tickets to film makers and then reneging on that promise. Several Berlin film makers were also being denied entrance to it became an international incident.

Claudine said she would get the 5 or so filmmakers who had been denied tickets in. When we got in the entire front row was empty, so I got to see my film distorted from below and VERY large. I noticed a few things from that close that I hope to correct in the weeks ahead. I don’t judge people based on the mistakes they make, but by how they correct their mistakes. Claudine pulled through. Surprisingly there were still empty seats in the theater.

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: Wins Best Micro Short Film Award

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COVID Dystopia was shown at the Berlin Short Film Festival. It won an award as the Best Micro Short Film. Pam and I traveled to Berlin and spent a week exploring the city.

The Berlin Short Film Festival wasn’t the experience I had hoped for. The films were to be shown in the historic Babylon Theater which was build in 1928 which seats about 500 people. It is a gorgeous theater with a huge balcony and large screen. However the festival films were screened in a much smaller room, Kino 2, at the back of the building. Although technically in the same building as the historic Babylon Theater, it was a much smaller space that seated about 80 people. Next to the Berlin Festival screening room was the rehearsal space for an orchestra. They could be heard tuning up through the walls as the Berlin Film Festival films were projected. I am glad my film is rather loud which meant it could drown out the rehearsal.

In the Babylon Theater itself. the classic silent film Metropolis was being shown with a live orchestra. I honestly wish we had gone to that showing instead, which reflected back to the classic early Hollywood era.

Each film maker in the Berlin Short Film Festival was promised tickets for two of the crew members to attend the festival screenings. In Chicago Pam and I sat in on every short film to show our support for fellow film makers. Perhaps we were spoiled by the experience.

COVID Dystopia was to screen on Sunday in Berlin, but the festival started on Saturday. We made our way to the Babylon to meet the Festival organizers in the lobby. I simply introduced myself as the creator of COVID Dystopia. They seemed confused. Since COVID Dystopia was not on the line up for the first night they said, “We changed our mind, you must pay to see the films.”

I would have turned on my heals and left, but Pam stepped in and politely decided to pay. Every film we saw that first night was about death and murder. It was a depressing endless stream of existential dread. I can see how my film fits into the festival’s curated line up. Berliners like dark shit.

Of course Pam and I were the only people wearing N95 masks in the audience.