COVID Film: Button

Posted on by Thor

I designed a button to help promote the film a film festivals. Granted film makers might not want a film with COVID on it, but how could they resist a butting with laurels on it? The button will be 1.5 inches wide which is kind of small, but hey the virus is small. I decided to get 50 of these made up. They are just swag. I will not be selling them.

I also printed up cards with the film poster on the front and social media and lyrics to Andy Matchett’s song, Just Can’t Wait on the back. Again they are swag giveaways to help promote the film. There is a QR code on the back and amazingly it leads directly to the film. I scanned it and saw the film on my phone for the first time. Honestly, most people will likely see the film on their phones but I am continuing to promote it at film festivals.

The post cards are ready but when I went to drive to the print shop, I discovered my car battery was dead. That is how long my car has been sitting idle in the driveway. Pam and I tried to jump it last night without success. We will try again tomorrow for a longer time. The jump we did managed to get a few small light to work but the engine was still dead.

The cards will have to stay at the printer until I figure out how to get the car up and running again.

COVID Film: New Poster

Posted on by Thor

Since I took a day off from animating due to Adobe After Effects glitchy render engine, I spent the day instead working in Photoshop on a new poster for the movie. It turns our the new 2024 Adobe Photoshop also has problems because it crashed at least 5 times. One of those crashes resulted in the loss of quite a bit of work which I had to repeat.

Rather than print 18 by 24 inch posters for the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival I am printing 5.5 by 8.5 inch flyers. This is the front of the flyers and on the back will be the lyrics to Andy Matchett‘s song Just Can’t Wait along with social media handles. I am still making adjustments to the back.

Actually looking at this image I realize that it is missing some spatters that I added. Those must have dropped out when Photoshop crashed the last time. I will have to go back and add then again. Working with Adobe products means always having to double guess yourself.

I also got an approval sheet for the COVID buttons. It turns out they are being manufactured in Houston, where presidents go to be assassinated.

Pandemic Film: New Year

Posted on by Thor

This is the most fun shot I worked on yesterday. At first I created a depth map that included the skeleton, but when I started animating the confetti, I quickly discovered that it overlapped him in awkward ways. I decided the skeleton had to have his own layer and he was only overlapped by the upper most confetti animation that I added at the end.

The camera pans down and with the parallax, Times Square seems cavernous. Each confetti layer was moved at different rates. The top layer moved the most and less movement occurred moving back in space.  The shot took several hours to composite but it lasts on the screen for less than a second. It was worth it.

In some ways the film is organized chronologically, in that each year with a new refrain a painting is highlighted for that years Time Square celebration. In other ways the film is arranged thematically based on the lyrics of Andy Matchett‘s song, Just Can’t Wait. The song was written in 2017 for the Fringe show Key of E, which was an apocalyptic rock musical. In so many ways the lyrics are prophetic about the way the COVID pandemic unfolded and continues to unfold.

On May 11, 2023 the United States will end its COVID public health emergency. May 11, 2023 will be this film’s birthday. 1,128,404 Americans have died of COVID-19, with about 200 more still dying every week. 250,000 American children have lost a parent. Millions of Americans are suffering from long COVID. Loneliness may not be the worst thing to come from the pandemic.

COVID is airborne, the pandemic is far from over.