COVID Film Official Selection

Posted on by Thor

COVID is an official selection at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival being held November 10-11, 2023. COVID will be be shown at the 4 pm screening on Saturday November 11. This is the 20th annual CIRSF Film Festival.

The screening will be in the Chicago Filmmakers Theater, 1326 W. Hollywood Ave., Chicago, IL 60660.  This Venue is the NEW Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Location, located in the Andersonville neighborhood. I am quite excited since this is the first time COVID is being screened outside of Orlando. Tickets to the screening at $15 should you be in Chicago. If anyone knows of a nice place to stay in North Chicago, let me know.

Chicago Filmmakers is a not-for-profit media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation, and understanding of film and video as media for artistic and personal expression, as well as media of important social and community impact. Chicago Filmmakers’ twofold mission is to serve independent film and digital video artists by supporting the creation and dissemination of new media arts works and to serve Chicago audiences by screening artistically innovative, socially relevant, and diverse films and videos.

I will be attending the festival and now I am arranging to print 5 by 7 cards, posters and buttons as swag. Should you be ins Chicago, stop by and say hi. Look for the guy in the N95 mask and goggles.

 

COVID Film: Nursing Home Animation

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Looking at this image, I realize that I am not quite done with this nursing home animation. The back bar of the walker needs to be erased on each frame so it disappears behind the woman’s dress. The animation I did was too fast for a slow moving woman, so I had to cur about four frames.

I am not sure yet if the green screen will work properly. There is a slight green glow on the woman from a large virus. The problem with having green on the animation is that it might become transparent when I key out the green screen. I couldn’t use a blue screen since she is wearing a blue dress.

Hopefully it will all come together today when I composite the scene together.

COVID Film: Flaming Baby Reworked

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I always felt uncomfortable when a smiling baby appeared in the midst of the COVID film. It was what I had painted at the time but it didn’t fit with the overall flow of the film. I decided to change the baby using the previous shot as reference. The depth map worked out really well turning the baby’s head as he cried.

Looking at this Volumax depth map now, I realize I could probably paint some better depth for the open mouth and ear canal. The painting is extremely blown up so the line work is thicker than any other shot in the film. I think I will go back and redraw the baby to help it tie in to the resolution of the shots on either side of it.

I could animate the mouth a bit but I am not sure that is needed. Since things happen so fast, I face this challenge often, wondering if animation will help or over complicate a shot. I keep adding animation since I am entering the film in the animation category in film festivals. Yet this film is something different. It defies being easily categorized.

I also know that I am presenting something that no one wants to see. The nation has embraced a new normal in which COVID isn’t ever discussed. There is a strange collective amnesia in the rush to pretend that all is as it was in 2019. This film defies that wishful thinking.

COVID Film: Zeros Bomb COVID

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This shot is a fast pan from right to left following the planes. I felt there wasn’t enough motion in the fires or the rising smoke, so I dove in to re-animate. Before I had added subtle animation to the smoke by scaling up that layer. This time I added some pins in the smoke and moved them to add more motion.

I added some pins to the fire as well and had it rise. The added motion is still lost because of the fast camera move. The only way to add more motion is to go ahead and hand animate the fire. That is something I an considering as I seek out any lessons on effects animation.

Nothing else had to be changed, so I left the Zeros and the bomb as they were. Looking now I notice that the propeller on the larger plane seems to hold still. Adding some blur  effect could help add motion there. The plane flys by so fast that no one would even notice.

COVID Film: Finishing the Ambulance

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This opening scene had a complete overhaul because of pixelation issues. Every ambulance was redrawn in a 4K scene that was twice the resolution of the last pass. Since I re-timed some of the animation the entire scene had to be repainted as well.

In Callipeg I scaled up the background so I knew how the colors would read against the cityscape. Because the background was scaled up, it is slightly pixelated, but I will be using the original Procreate file in the final render. I will probably have to make the After Effects scene double the resolution, since last time I had to scale down the background painting to place it in the 1920 by 1080 scene window. The actual background is rather square in proportions so there was a lot of blank space in the After Effects scene.

When the ambulence drives down from the distant horizon I used the transform tool rather than redrawing all the keyframes to the distance. One thing I wish Callipeg offered was an ability to set the timing of the transform tool on 2s or 3s if needed. It always animated the movement evenly on 1s. I used to transform tool to move things like the headlights and a blinking red spotlight. The transformed elements moved on ones while the animated ambulance moved on 2s. That lead to some stair stepped movement. I ended up having to go into every other fame and adjust the movement by hand anyway.

The camera move was done in Premiere Pro last time. I might try and do the camera move in After Effects this time since it will be a very high resolution scene. All this is experimentation to try and get around the loss of resolution that happens between Callipeg and After Effects.

COVID Film: Another Pixelation Issue

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After resolving a glaring pixelation problem in the Satanic Ram shot, I decided to go back and take a look at the opening shot. This close up shot shows how horribly pixelated the ambulance was. I decided I had to redraw each ambulance and I am now in the process of repainting each of them.

The green screen allows me to transfer animation to the final composite in After Effects. I turn off the green screen while I paint to see how the colors work with the background. Reworking the shot was also an opportunity to smooth out some of the animation timing. I left out details on the front grill since that will all be covered by headlight  beams and glow effects.

So yesterday I finished redrawing and painting the ambulance body. Today I get to paint lighting effects. Last time I transferred each of the paintings into Procreate since I like the brushing available in that program. This time I will see if I can get the same effects using the brushes in Callipeg. I will be watching videos of NYC ambulances to see the timing of the lights as they blink. With more resolution I can pay closer attention to each of the lights.

I just learned that YouTube and other social media sites censor any mention of the words “COVID” and “Pandemic”. Tic Tokers refer to it as “the “vid” or “during the panini”. With such censorship, this film will have a hard time finding an audience. I need to keep the film off of social media since many of the largest film festivals require that the screenings be a premiere. They will not show films that are being shown online. It feels awful holding the film back while festivals refuse to screen it.

Novavax was approved today. That will be my vaccine of choice to combat the new COVID variants. I asked my doctor about Novavax last time I was in for an appointment and he didn’t know what it was. The more expensive mRNA vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer only influence the spike proteins. Novavax is more like traditional vaccines and it affects the entire COVID virus.

COVID Film: Pixelation Problem

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I came close to completing this shot yesterday. However when I imported the Callipeg animation into the final Premiere Pro edit, The hands seemed glaringly pixelated. The painting this scene is built around is vertical but the film is horizontal 1920 by 1080 pixels. In After Effects I had placed the vertical image into the 1920 by 1080 frames which meant the image was reduced by about 50%. That 50% reduction insize is enough to make pixelation an issue.

With that slightly pixelated image imported in Callipeg, I started copying and pasting the hands to move them around. Moving those copies around resulted in further pixelation. In Callipeg the ram image only took up maybe 1/8th of the screen real estate. To try an overcome the pizelization i decided to redraw each of the hands. The end result is what you see above with full animation but still blurry hands.

My next choice was to scale up the image in Callipeg and redraw the arms again. I saw a video that showed an ability to scale multiple layers all at once, so I did that to get the job done fast. Unfortunately Callipeg could not scale the layers all at once. Some were scaled and others reverted back to the small size. On top of that some frames were shuffled to other layers. The result was that all the drawings were scrambled and impossible to reassemble into the smooth animation I had worked so hard on.

Today I will likely re animate the scene but at a much higher resolution. The Procreate files are at a high enough resolution. I think the problem began when I scaled the image down in After Effects. I will have to double the image size in After Effects to maintain the initial resolution. then in Callipeg I will fill the screen with the ram character rather than the entire painting. I will have to redraw every hand to keep the crisp line work.

The final After Effects composition will also have to be reworked. Having the depth map a bit blurry is fine but the image will have to be at double the resolution. I just hope my laptop can handle a scene so large. I made the mistake of creating a 4K scene earlier and it caused my computer to crash.

COVID Film: The Peak

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This shot seen in After Effects, was added to the film to replace a shot of a plague doctor deer in a flaming church. The plague doctor animation just wasn’t cutting it. The shot was placed in the film simply because it was the end of a long series of shots that featured skulls. I decided to relax that skull initiative and use shots that result in better animation options.

In The Peak, the hospital bed slips from its perch and starts to roll downhill. The camera cuts on the action so the viewer is left uncomfortable but uncertain if the patient will indeed crash down the mountainside. The depth map makes it feel like a helicopter is flying by the peak shooting the scene and I am pleased that the clouds also move in the breeze. It fells s bit like the shot of Julie Andrews singing in the Swiss Alps in Sound of Music but with a tragic undertone.

I am now going through the entire film looking for the best animation options. Movement trumps the theme of the shots.

Typing up these notes each morning helps me double check work that has been done. In the shot of the Santas, I discovered that eh body bag wasn’t fully painted and I went back to repair the oversight. This morning I just realized that one Facebook logo slipped by my alterations, so I need to make that repair this morning.  Another FB logo needs to replaced in the Freedom of Speech shot. Juggling over 200 shots means dropping a ball every so often.

COVID Film: COVID Replaced Facebook

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The compositing of the whole Santas scene was also simple and straightforward. I am so used to things going horribly wrong after a week of animating that I was expecting some hangup but the scene fell into place with ease.

I decided to replace Facebook with COVID for this shot in the film. I also dropped a mask on Mark Zuckerberg so he is less easy to identify. My thought is that having a corporate logo in the film could keep it from being screened.

I was pleasantly surprised with how easy the change was to create. After replacing each Facebook logo with COVID or C, I then exported the images into After Effects. The animation of the flag was going to be a challenge I thought. However when I replaced the Facebook flag with the new Covid flag, the scene was automatically updated and I didn’t need to dig into the animation again.

I think the next scene I will tackle is animating some smoke in the Pearl Harbor scene.

COVID Film: Animating Santas 6

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I finished animating the Santas on day 6. I will add one more waving hand into the scene since the hand jumps in rather fast on screen left. Then I need to add shadows and a group of workers in hazmat suits. So I am hoping to animate three figures today but as a group.

I am starting to think I have to find replacement shot for several scenes with corporate logos. I have one scene of the insurrection where I replaced all the flags with Facebook themed flags. That single shot may keep Film Festivals from considering the film for selection.

In most movies things like soda cans are replaced with fictional branding. You never see a Coca Cola or Mountain Dew. I may have to do the same for my film. Facebook might become Factbook or Fictbook. I might also just pick another insurrection scene, since I have many.