Like you said is the result of my first attempt at making a short film using a new Web app called xtranormal. You write a story, pick a background and characters, decide on a few expressions, pauses, gestures and camera angles… and after many trials and errors, you get a short animated movie!
xtranormal is a company founded in 2006 by Richard Szalwinski, formerly of Discreet Logic and Softimage. It is headquartered in Montreal. The only thing I don’t like much is their tagline: « If you can type, you can make movies. » As a screenwriter, I cringed when I read that. Oh well. I’ll admit it’s catchy.
Creating this one minute sketch was quite a bit of work, but I had a great time doing it. Then again, I was at the Machinima Filmfestival in New York recently and when I think of the huge amount of work that went into these short films, I realize that the few hours I spent putting this scene together tonight do not compare.
Even if the options and the final result are limited right now, I’m amazed at the potential of the tool. Who knows? I’m thinking Like you said might be the first of a series that could be called « Blork and Tini ». It would be about a bilingual couple who’s a little too passionate about food and technology. We’ll see… Here’s the synopsis for this episode:
A bilingual couple from Montreal argues over who’s got the worst social networking addiction.
Let me know what you think!
