Plotagon – Make a movie by just writing a story

No Linux version?<p>Edit: Got it installed on Windows. Note that your installer window doesn&#x27;t display quite right under Windows 8 at higher DPI settings (<a href="http://i.imgur.com/GXQA3uz.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;GXQA3uz.png</a>). I like that the application does automatic camera work; last time I tried Xtranormal (admittedly, a while ago) they didn&#x27;t offer that. Is there a way to use a custom speech synthesis engine for a character in Windows? Ellen&#x27;s voice is disappointingly synthetic and I would rather use a nicer third-party voice I have installed. Edit 2: At least Ellen&#x27;s voice is like that when saying &quot;Joe&quot; -- you can hear her show a bit of SHODAN heritage at <a href="http://vocaroo.com/i/s00J7Zud8UnB" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vocaroo.com&#x2F;i&#x2F;s00J7Zud8UnB</a> -- but not when she says other things, apparently.<p>Nice as it is, I don&#x27;t see this program gaining mind share without a video made in it going viral. I would recommend allowing some form of movie sharing in the free version (perhaps watermarked or limited to a direct upload to your own website) to make that happen.

I was excited to use this to enhance language learning dialogs, but their licensing is very strict and the software doesn&#x27;t give you access to the final video files to redistribute them.<p>Apart from their specific use case, I it seems it would be hard to do anything else with this. They should think a bit harder about unshackling it a bit. It&#x27;s a powerful idea.

A while back Microsoft demonstrated a translation technology which can translate your words into a different language in your own voice. I suppose technically we can analyze voice recordings of actual actors to obtain a voice profile with which we can use to do text to speech (not suggesting plotagon should do that, just saying technically we can do it since the technology&#x27;s feasibility has been demonstrated)?<p><a href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2012/11/08/microsoft-research-shows-a-promising-new-breakthrough-in-speech-translation-technology.aspx#.UiL8GzYqh8G" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.technet.com&#x2F;b&#x2F;next&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2012&#x2F;11&#x2F;08&#x2F;microsoft...</a><p>edit: also, there are already vision-based behavioral&#x2F;gait analysis software in existence (how well they work is another question)...so conceivably we can also recreate an actor&#x27;s performances?

The progress of computation means that eventually – maybe in 50 years? – a tool like this will be able to output results that look as good as today&#x27;s big-budget blockbusters, including recognizable actors in convincing performances.

Mhh a download of payed software. Too bad, with an open model and proper integration of social media this could have been a billion dollar start-up and one of the things that could take on Hollywood in a couple of years once their tech has matured a bit (no this won&#x27;t compete with Michael Bay and yes most movies will be crap and&#x2F;or porn, but it now means that every half decent writer will be able to gets or her work on the big screen).

Someone get me some popcorn, because this is going to be so bad it&#x27;s awesome. This will be the new Xtranormal.

It&#x27;s a great idea but I think it is a long way from being useful. The one feature I would not expect to see using a tool like this is realistic rendition of the dialogue. I know that is not technologically feasible. What I would expect to do in abscence of that, is be able to set the mood of the scene through lighting and colour, have a wider camera angle and movement vocabulary, and a wider range of interactions between the actors. This would make it a powerful previz tool and it would help tell the story closer to the writers intent in the absence of human reading the script. Just some of my thoughts. It would also be nice to see a linux version of this too. I can&#x27;t see experienced writers using this, but they may not be the target audience. Who is the target audience by the way?

The problem I have with this, and with similar tools past and present, is that as you get further into them you realize how much your script starts being limited by the tool. I&#x27;d like to write about a group of handicapped kids of different races who go to a camp near a lake. Imagine how many of the characters and scenes I just described are not supported by the tool. Which shouldn&#x27;t be surprising given that a script can be in any setting within this world or another one. Unless the tool has a separate procedural background tool, and a procedural set tool, and a procedural character tool, you will always find that the &quot;does anything&quot; tool doesn&#x27;t.<p>Is it worth $25 if you are doing sitcoms or the like? Probably. Otherwise, less likely so...

I&#x27;ve often wondered about the reverse. A movie script as the ultimate video compression.

I&#x27;m a bit confused about who is this for. Looking at the examples it&#x27;s obviously not for making movies, unless you consider a video capture from the Sims to be a movie.<p>What is the goal for this project, who will use it? The only one I see is a couple of &quot;so bad they&#x27;re good&quot; funny videos.

There was an earlier post on HN few months ago that talked about a tool or similar that help write formulaic scripts and in fact being used pervasively (iirc) in Hollywood. Anyone remember it? Might be a good fit to go with this?

We&#x27;ve come a very long way since the days of the story maker I had for my Atari 130XE as a kid that would manipulate on-screen characters based on English text.

seems really similar to the early days of animoto, which were pretty popular on youtube