Today at the last second this shot replaced a shot of a couch potato lounging with the virus with beer bottles and pizza strewn about. In this shot children inspect the virus with their cell phones. It tied in better with the lyrics. The other issue with the couch potato is that it depicted Mark Wahlberg. Pam picked up on that fact and I realized that if the star caught her attention I might want to change it so the scene would not be about star identification.
This is a depth map I just painted to fix an issue I noticed in the final render of the film. The virus became distorted around the children;s heads so I went in and darkened the negative shapes between them. The fix might not be in the film shown at the free Fringe screening on May 19, 2023 at 6pm in the Shakes outdoor courtyard. I will probably cut this into future edits that will make the rounds at film festivals.
Today I got caught up in trying to complete a final render. The computer kept freezing just as the audio stated in the film. After hours of research I found that the bitrate didn’t match between the audio clip in the timeline and the final output. I had to change the render bitrate from 384 to 320 and then all was well. This type of arbitrary tech stuff is soul crushing but I managed to get the render completed. Pam is going to coach me on how to submit the film using Google Docs. Today I counted and there are over 200 paintings in the animated short I am submitting.
May 11, 2023 the United States is dropping the COVID state of emergency. All future medical expenses are out of pocket for any American infected. The pandemic is not over but the state of emergency is. May 11. 2023 therefor is this films birthday.