Have you ever walked out of a movie theatre utterly convinced you could have made a far better film? Now you can put your money where your mouth is with a new screenwriting tool called Plotagon. To make it easier for the imaginationally challenged to visualise a scene or dialogue they’ve just written, the software actually generates an animated version of the script.
Is it perfect? Far from it. Is that what makes Plotagon especially awesome? You better believe it.
As you’re writing your opus, the software lets you choose from a small assortment of characters and locations to set your story in. And when it comes to dialogue, you can specify how a particular line is spoken by a character — happy, sad, shocked, etc. — and even have them move about a locale to increase the drama. The short film you see above was based on a chat transcript as the Gizmodo staff reacted to the potential of this tool, and we think you’ll agree it’s at least worth a nomination.
The software is currently still in beta and free to download if you think you’ve got an Oscar contender trapped somewhere in your brain. And we hope that as it gets closer to an official release, the final version will include more varied locations, sound effects, and especially characters. Because as it stands there’s not a single robot or even child, and it’s impossible to win an Oscar without at least one of those. [Plotagon via PSFK]