So You Want To Make a 48 Hour Film Festival Film (Part III: Timeline)

 Culture, my projects  No Responses »
May 312011
 

Note: this is part three, see the first part for the introduction and disclaimer.

If all goes well, your effort should unfold something like this:

Before the competition: triple check the equipment. Do an end-to-end test by shooting some test footage, editing it into a short clip, and outputting it into the final format. Double check that the resulting file meets the requirements of the competition and take note of how long everything took. Remember to estimate how long your film will take to render and subtract that from the 48 hours you think you have to finish. Do this a couple of days beforehand so you have time to organise any replacement equipment should you need to.

Make sure that you have replacement batteries and recording media. Trust me on this.

On the Friday night: Send along a couple of people to the 48Hour kickoff event. The rest of the team should assemble somewhere quiet and comfortable. After the kickoff, your team’s representatives should phone ahead to let the team know the genre and required elements. The team should spend the evening kicking around ideas until everyone is happy with the rough shape of the film. The script should be written that night, ready for the start of shooting the following morning.

Saturday: Aim to start early, especially if travel is required. The script should have been emailed to the team during the night, so everyone should have seen a copy and know roughly what they need to bring in terms of costumes. With any luck, you can start shooting as soon as it is light. Aim to shoot the outdoor scenes first, you never know how much fine weather you are going to get. Make sure everyone is fed, people will be working hard.

With any luck, most of the shooting will be done by Saturday afternoon. If you are organised, it may be possible for your editor to start assembling finished scenes while the rest of the crew completes shooting but I have never been in a team that has managed this yet.

The editor can now get to work making a rough cut of the film. This should tell the complete story and give an idea of how the pacing works, but does not need music, titles, or much polish. It is here that the editor might discover that he or she does not have a shot required to tell the story, or that the sound is bad in one shot, etc.

Sunday: Assemble the crew you need for any reshoots and get them out of the way. You might have some ideas for different shots after seeing the rough cut, now is the time to try them out. Your musicians should be finishing up about this time. The final edit might take a couple of hours, depending on the complexity of your film. Adding in music tracks, and the title and credit sequences always take longer than you think. You really want to be finishing up about mid-afternoon. Remember that rendering your film can take hours if you have a slow computer. Don’t be like the people I see every year standing at the finishing line holding laptops still waiting for the render to finish as the clock strikes 7pm.

Now you get to bask in the knowledge that you have completed a film. Enjoy the heats, they are a lot of fun to watch.

So You Want To Make a 48 Hour Film Festival Film (Part II : Cast and Crew)

 Culture, my projects  No Responses »
May 312011
 

Note: this is part two, see the first part for the introduction and disclaimer.

Unless you are one of the mad people who can fling together a film solo, you are going to need teamwork to get the job done. Being on a team involves knowing when to share your ideas, and just as importantly, knowing when to shut-up and keep out of the way. You are going to be with these people for most of the weekend, so make sure you at least tolerate each other – things are going to be stressful enough as it is.

Apart from the actors, you are going to need some crew.

A director's chairMost importantly, the director decides how the action plays out in a scene including where the actors are positioned, what is in the background, what exactly the camera is looking at, etc. The director should not be afraid to boss people around if needed, and he or she has final say if discussion about an aspect of the filming gets “spirited”.

The camera operator is in charge of the camera equipment, including the lenses and making sure that batteries are charged and there is a fresh supply of media to record to. This person should know how to use the camera enough to make sure everything is in focus and the white balance is set correctly. The camera operator usually has a better idea of what is actually being recorded through the lens, so can often help with setting up lighting if this is required. Also, if you are recording sound directly onto the camera, the camera operation can check levels and microphone placement.

If you have a small crew, the director and the camera operator can be the same person, but it is often good to separate the roles since setting up the equipment can take up valuable directing time. While the camera operator is shooting, somebody shot be writing down a rough description of the shots being taken. This will help the editor later on.

The scriptwriter takes the ideas from the team and writes a shooting script. This will have all the dialogue and rough stage directions. In my experience, it is hard for people to write a script as a group; far better to let one or two people go off and whip something up once the general idea for the movie has been decided on. The script is not set in stone, but should give the actors the dialogue they need and the director an idea of what shots are needed to tell the story. Remember that the script needs to include all the required items specified in the rules.

The editor assembles the shots into a film and has the biggest influence on the final product. This person should be familiar with the software being used. Like scriptwriting, editing is difficult to do in a big group – one or two people maximum. If the editor can’t tell the story with the material the director shot, it may be necessary for the dreaded reshoot.

Depended on your film and who you have available, your crew might also include musicians, dedicated people for lighting and sound, drivers to ferry everyone around and possibly make-up artists if your cast is ugly.

So You Want To Make a 48 Hour Film Festival Film (Part I : Intro and Equipment)

 Culture, my projects  No Responses »
May 302011
 

Introduction

I have been involved in a few 48 Hour Film Festival projects over the years, this post is me trying to get down in writing the things that made our films successful. And by successful I don’t mean that we won prizes or accolades; I mean that we had a great time making them, learnt a few things, arrived at the finish line on time, and got to see our work projected on the big screen to a polite smattering of applause. In my view that is what the 48 Film Festival is all about.

None of the following advice applies to the superstar professional teams that enter the competition every year. Those people already know what they are doing. This is strictly for the first-timers.

Equipment and Software

Canon 550D CameraCamera, you need one (well, duh). If you don’t have access to a professional video camera, your options are a digital SLR camera in video mode, or a home camcorder. The camcorder will probably be easier to use, but the DSLR camera will have vastly better lenses. This year we used a Canon 550D, a low-end DSLR, and were pleased with how it looked.

Tripod, doesn’t have to be flash – we used a plastic one that my Mum got free in some special offer years ago. If you are feeling ambitious then try to arrange a dolly – we did without but it can add visual interest to otherwise static scenes if the camera moves smoothly.

Sound is an area where a lot of films fall down; our films have never had good sound because we skimp on microphones and it costs us in the heats. Ideally you want an external microphone with a long enough cord to put in on a boom or somewhere close to the actors. The other option is to rerecord dialogue later and lay it on top of the video during editing, but that is a big job for an amateur team. You can use the camera’s inbuilt microphone but the results will not be great.

Lighting is a problem for small teams, especially when filming indoors with small camcorders. If you don’t have access to proper stage lights, reading lamps that are not too directional can do at a pinch. If the weather is good, try to shoot outdoors as much a possible. You have to be careful shooting in direct sunlight, to avoid the actors faces being half in shadow you need a source of fill light. A white piece of cardboard or polystyrene foam can be used to bounce sunlight back the other way to eradicate annoying dark patches.

A car (or two), you will need to transport people and equipment around. Food and drink enough for the entire cast and crew. Nobody works well when they are hungry and thirsty. Sunscreen is important when filming outside. Petty cash on hand to buy props and supplies in a hurry. A few changes of clothes for your actors if your story takes place over multiple days. Maybe some make-up for the actors.

A computer and editing software. If in doubt, get an Apple Mac. All Macs come with iMovie (editing) and Garage Band (music, multi-track recording), two pieces of easy to use software that together make up 95% of what you need to make a short film. Better software exists but not for free.

Two other pieces of software we found useful were Audacity (sound editor), and InkScape (graphics editor for titles, etc). Both these programs are available for Mac and Windows, and are free. Make sure you have at least a passing familiarity with the software before the big weekend. Every minute will count once you get to the editing stage.

Whew! I didn’t set out to write so much. This is going to have to be a two part affair.

Minecraft Creeper Shirt

 Culture, Games, my projects  5 Responses »
May 152011
 

The minecraft creeper face textureI don’t use my computer for games much these days, but I have been playing a bit of Minecraft lately. Minecraft is a strange beast, more of a pastime than an actual game, but well worth the money. I have tried online games before, and although I like shooting things, the first person shooters all look the same after a while, and the MMOs are tedious. A huge, multiplayer lego set turns out to be just what I wanted. Besides, I find the lo-fi graphics and even the obvious bugs in the game charming.

As I was invited to a fancy dress party recently, I decided I needed a Minecarft creeper shirt. The creepers are the most terrifying creatures in the game, and I knew I needed to do them justice. 4 pots of fabric paint and many hours gave this result:Me in my creeper teeshirt

SsssssSSSSS – kabooom!

Not too bad, if I say so myself.

Update: I have been asked how the tee shirt was made. This was my first experience with this type of craft, so perhaps a better way exists, but the following steps seemed to work OK:

Materials

  • Plain white tee shirt (I brought mine from the Warehouse for the princely sum of $8. If I was going to do it again I might spring for a better quality shirt since the one I got was made from rather thin fabric.)
  • Long straight edge ruler
  • A dark pencil (2B or similar), dress makers chalk would probably be better
  • Textile Ink – I used Fastex Textile Ink which I found in the craft section of Warehouse Stationary. The colours I used for the Creeper design were Black, White, Leaf and Green.
  • Some brushes
  • Water
  • Small containers for mixing colours (I used yogurt pottles)
  • Lots of newspaper to protect the table top
  • Lots of copier paper for stencils
  • Baking paper
  • An Iron
  • Some scissors

Method

First I ironed the shirt until it was as smooth as I could make it. Then with the ruler and pencil I divided the shirt into squares of equal size. Because the design I wanted extends all around the shirt, some of the squares wrap around across seams.

Don’t make the squares too small! Large areas are much quicker to paint than small ones.

I started at the centre line for both the front and marched the squares towards the edges. It doesn’t matter that the squares the wrap around over the seams are slightly different widths, being symmetrical is more important.

With the dining table covered in newspaper, I laid out the tee shirt as flat as I could. Then I inserted the glossy insert magazines that came with the paper into the tee shirt to keep the inside surfaces from touching. This is to stop the ink from bleeding through to the reverse surface when you brush it on.

I used a purpose-bought Weekend Herald for this, because I knew it came with a lot of glossy paper inserts that will not absorb ink or fall apart when damp like newsprint will. If you follow my lead, it is vitally important not to accidentally glance at any of the editorials, regular columns, or especially the letters to the editor. You need to maintain your calm for applying the ink.

To get really straight edges on the design it is best to mask out the fabric with masking tape. I found the really cheap off-brand sello-tape works even better, as the adhesive sticks just well enough to do the job but comes off very easily. However, I had far to many square to paint, so I just used bits of copier paper cut more or less straight with scissors. Holding down the paper against the fabric with one hand, I quickly brushed on the int with the other, taking particular care with the corners. Working this way I found I could do a square every couple of minutes.

I needed a lot a shades of green, so I was continuously mixing colours. Some very vivid colours can be created, but mixing in too much black or white just results in a muddy mess. Some of the squares are supposed to be white – I just left them unpainted.

The squares that wrap around from front to back across the seams were the hardest. I carefully folded the sides of the shirt up to reach the hidden side, then placed bits of baking paper over the wet ink before I laid the fabric flat against the newsprint. The prevented the ink from smearing if the shirt moved around, the baking paper doesn’t get stuck to the ink as it dries.

Once the front was done and completely dry, I fixed the ink (see below) before completing the other side. Remember the wash and dry your brushes.

Fixing the ink (so it doesn’t run when damp) is done with a hot iron. Iron each part of the shirt for 3-5 minutes to make sure that the ink stay where it is supposed to. I thought I did a pretty good job, but found the the black areas still ran a little when I washed the shirt, so you might like to pay particular attention to dark colours.

Go forth and impress people* with your custom, one-of-a-kind shirt.

* results may vary

TV Theme Quiz Answers

 my projects  No Responses »
Jun 152010
 

Both the TV Theme Quizes generated a lot of traffic but not many people emailed me about them. For those keeping score at home, several people completed the first quiz but the best score I heard for the second was 20 out of 26. In retrospect, I think some of the second quiz was a little too obscure – if I ever do anything similar I will try to tone it down a little.

Anyway, everyone has had plenty of time so here are the official answers.

Questions and complaints in the comments.

A Name and a Number – 48 Hours Filmmaking Competition

 Culture, my projects  No Responses »
Apr 282010
 

2 weekends ago I participated in the annual 48 Hours Filmmaking Competition. Each team had to make a film containing a character named Sydney, a broken toy, the line “When you look at it that way”, and a dolly zoom. Cutting straight to the chase, here is the result:

(view on youtube)

I don’t think it turned out too badly – technical limitations aside I think we had a fairly decent story. The audience seemed to enjoy the film during the showing and the reviews have been generally favourable (more or less.) Unfortunately we were disqualified from the judging due to technical problems with the master we submitted on the day, but it didn’t matter in the end. One of the other teams in our heat submitted a brilliant film that was always going to be the finalist.

This is not the first time I have been involved in the 48 Hours Competition. I did it about 5 years ago with a much more professional team in Auckland. The experience was so stressful that I almost didn’t take the opportunity this year but I am glad that I did.

Bevan, the producer/director, assembled a random collection of people with little/no experience, many of whom could not be present for the whole weekend. Our equipment consisted of an 10 year old handicam (borrowed on the understanding that the owner’s daughter would be cast), a tripod and (for part of the time) some lights. So unlike my previous experience which involved hours of makeup, set dressing, rehearsing with proper actors and messing around with lighting rigs we just got on and shot stuff as we could. We actually had most of the shots on film by mid-afternoon on Saturday, about the time my previous team started shooting!

In case you are wondering, I was the main camera operator by dint of my knowledge of white balance. Having a camera with no-focus ring and no way to control the aperture made the job pretty simple. I only dropped the camera on concrete once, it actually worked better afterwards.

I think the strength of A Name and A Number is the story, a lot of films in the competition look and sound better but have plots that don’t resolve properly. If you think our film doesn’t go anywhere you should see some of the others. Although the film is humorous, the story is told in a serious tone (it was originally intended to be a psychological drama) which I think helps – a lot of the entries try to be funny which is hard to (intentionally) pull off. Lame drama is more watchable than a lame comedy.

Longest Word You Can Type (QWERTY Edition)

 Computer, Culture, my projects  No Responses »
May 092009
 

My previous blog entry on TXTing provoked this response from my friend Lloyd:

…[I] figured out that longest word typed with only the upper letters in the QWERTY keyboard is not only TYPEWRITER but also includes several 3 other words: PERPETUITY, PROPRIETOR and REPERTOIRE. The longest in the middle line is: GALAHADS and nothing from the bottom line but 2 character element symbols like: Zn

Obviously this is some sort of geek challenge. I accept!

Using Python I replicated Lloyd’s results for the top row of the QWERTY keyboard:
PERPETUITY, PROPRIETOR, REPERTOIRE, and TYPEWRITER

Lloyd’s result for the middle row is highly suspect – GALAHADS is the plural of a proper noun. www.thefreedictionary.com does cite a couple of references, but it certainly isn’t in the dictionary I am using. My results are:
ALFALFA and HALALAS (a unit of currency in Saudi Arabia)

There is nothing of note on the vowel-forsaken bottom row.

The longest words that can be typed using only your left hand are:
AFTEREFFECTS, DESEGREGATED, DESEGREGATES, RESEGREGATED, RESEGREGATES, REVERBERATED, REVERBERATES, and STEWARDESSES

For the right hand I get:
HYPOLIMNION (the bottom layer of water in a deep lake)

It seems that Lloyd and I are not the only ones to try this experiment, Wikipedia has completely different (and even more obscure) words listed.

LNGEST WRD TXTD WIT 1 FNGR

 Computer, Culture, my projects, WordMap  5 Responses »
Apr 222009
 

phoneThe question came up at work: what is the longest English word you can TXT using only a single key on your phone assuming no fancy predictive text?

Using a list of my favorite 147948 words (the same dictionary used in WordMap) and a few lines of python the answer is easy to find.

The longest word that can be typed with a single key is “deeded“.

Awesomely, second place is a tie between “abaca” (a species of banana) and “effed” which is not actually in any reputable dictionary but damn well should be.

There are nine 4 letter words: “tutu“, “noon“, “moon“, “mono“, “high“, “feed“, “deed“, “baba“, and “abba“.

Remember, knowledge is power.

Sketch This Page! Image Processing with the Canvas Tag

 Computer, my projects  No Responses »
Mar 262009
 

I have been quietly impressed with the progress web browsers have been making in recent years towards the goal of supporting a wide variety of applications. The promise of web-apps rivaling traditional desktop applications seems within reach after nigh-15 years of ballyhoo. Most recent browsers have extremely fast Javascript support and highly optimized DOMs, allowing a good level of interaction.

Of course, there a times when moving <div>s around just doesn’t cut the mustard. The canvas tag is not well used but is nothing less than a surface you can draw on using Javascript. It supports all the normal primitives (lines, arcs, fills, etc) and allows (indirect) access to the pixel data. While some people (eg: Project Bespin) are using the canvas tag in to offer extended functionality, I am busy fooling around.

Check out the fruit of my labour – Sketch This Page!.

It’s a Javascript bookmarklet that replaces each <img> element in a page with a same sized <canvas>. It works by copying the image to a temporary canvas, extracting the pixel data for some hacky post-processing, and then blatting the pixel-data onto the final canvas. The Javascript could certainly be better, but it works well enough and I am impressed with the speed.

The biggest flaw is that browsers will not allow Javascript to access the pixel data of images that are loaded from a different domain than the main page. This is a great idea from a security standpoint, but it does limit the usefulness of the bookmarklet. It would be great if Sketch This Page! worked on sites like Flickr, but sadly it is not to be.

For those interested, here is the function that actually dithers the image. I was going for a hatched look with the diagonal lines.

function generateBWDitherImage( src, dst )
{
   var srcContext = src.getContext(“2d”);
   var dstContext = dst.getContext(“2d”);

   var srcImageData = srcContext.getImageData(0, 0, src.width, src.height);
   var dstImageData = dstContext.getImageData(0, 0, dst.width, dst.height);
   
   for (var y = 0; y < dstImageData.height; ++y)
   {
      for (var x = 0; x < dstImageData.width; ++x)
      {
         var index = (dstImageData.width * 4) * y + (x * 4);
         var g = (0.30 * srcImageData.data[index]) +
             (0.59 * srcImageData.data[index+1]) +
             (0.11 * srcImageData.data[index+2]);
         if (g > 200)
         {
            g = 255;
         }
         else if (g > 150)
         {
            if (((y % 6) – x % 6) == 0)
               g = 0;
            else
               g = 255;
         }
         else if (g > 75)
         {
            if (((y % 4) – x % 4) == 0)
               g = 0;
            else
               g = 255;
         }
         else
            g = 0;
         dstImageData.data[index] = g;
         dstImageData.data[index+1] = g;
         dstImageData.data[index+2] = g;
         dstImageData.data[index+3] = 255;
      }
   }

   dstContext.putImageData( dstImageData, 0, 0 );
}

Tax Cut Calculator

 my projects  No Responses »
May 252008
 

Another budget has come and gone, this one more discussed than most for it actually contains the much promised but little seen tax cuts (read the Minister’s Executive Summary for details).

Here is a little project I whipped up to calculate the amount you are going to better off when the tax cuts come into force. All calculations are done in dollars, not the blocks of cheese that seem to have become currency over the last week. The current exchange rate: 1kg of tasty cheese = $NZ16.15.
Continue reading »

A Blast from the Past

 Computer, Games, my projects  2 Responses »
Mar 312008
 

A couple of weeks ago was using my old computer and discovered some long lost files from over a decade ago – back when my main computer was my trusty Amiga500. Although the laptop I am typing this on is easily hundreds of times faster and more capable in every way, I sometimes get nostalgic for the good old days.

Anyway, along with a few MOD files, my fourth year honors project, and assorted junk, I found a copy of this:

wizards.png
Wizard’s Isle Title Screen

Wizard’s Isle was a text adventure game I wrote one week during a summer that I spent gloriously unemployed (1995 according to the copyright notice). It is written in AMOS and runs perfectly in UAE (the emulator, not the country) – right down to the awful title music.

The premise of the game is that you have been sent to the titular island to ask the two wizards who live there for help with the strange events that have been occurring in the kingdom, but during the voyage your ship was caught in a storm and sunk. The game opens as you wash up on the wrong side of the island.

Playing the game again for the first time in 13 (thirteen!) years is a weird experience, like walking around the house you used to live in. I am amazed at how much I remember – I completed the game on my first attempt although it is rather easy apart from a couple of idiosyncratic puzzles. I remember putting a lot of effort into the writing, and apart from the spelling mistakes it holds up well, I think. Having said that, I don’t think I will be writing another text adventure anytime soon.

I have the files on my laptop, anyone who is interested can email me for the Amiga disk image.

Upgrade Time

 my projects, Uncategorized  No Responses »
May 202007
 

WordPress 2.2 was released a few days ago, and I thought it was a good excuse to finally update the year old version I was running. The upgrade was complicated by the fact that I store a two extra tables in my WordPress database for my WordMap game, but it all seems to be running OK now. Leave a comment if you notice any problems.

On a related note, WordPress tells me this is my 50th post!

 Posted by at 4:00 pm  Tagged with:

WordMap Update

 Computer, Games, my projects, WordMap  No Responses »
Mar 302007
 

I have made some small changes to the WordMap toy due to user feedback:

  • When doing the puzzles, the target word is now displayed along with the number of moves already taken.
  • When you reach the target word of a puzzle you get a nice message, especially nice if you have done it in the minimum number of moves.
  • Slightly rewritten the introduction page with a better explanation of what is going on, and less computer science.
  • A few more puzzles.
  • The URL is now obfuscated (look it up) to prevent cheating.
 Posted by at 9:08 pm
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