Doing survey about software idea for directors

[cwilkes]

Hi, first time poster here. I'm a computer programmer in a program where we think up ideas related to high tech and I would like to get everyone's opinion on this one I had related to the movie industry.

I'm not sure if there already is a tool for this, but would it be helpful to have a program where basic avatars (think low-res like Minecraft) can be moved around the screen and speak text given to them? My thought is that someone that's interested in blocking out a scene would find it handy to run through different scenarios before bringing out actors / extras / crew. Is there such a thing around? Is it all done with people right now? Is this even a viable idea? Has this been tried before and is universally hated?

Please feel free to email me cwilkes@gmail.com if you want to discuss further. I'm not selling anything (yet!) and I would like everyone's opinion on if this is worth pursuing. Hey if you have other ideas I'm all ears too.

 

[ussinners]

It's a good idea, more for theatre then lo-budget movies. Since space is limited.

Just to let you know, Final Draft has voices you can assign to different characters (age, sex) and they will read your script. Though I have to admit it's pretty bad, very electronic and no emotion.

 

[wheatgrinder]

previs is the area of preproduction your talking about. There are already several products that do what you describe. Iv never used any. frameforge is the only one that I can recall right now..

Celtx has a sketch feature that lets you do non-animated schematics etc,
Storyboards and schematics are the traditional methods.

A typical blocking diagram looks like this..

I think if you have an editor that looked like that and where you can keyframe the path of the actors and camera and have them speak lines, with a VIEWER that showed you the view from the camera.. thadbecool.

 

[Lucky Hardwood]

xtranormal has a new desktop setup that I'm beta testing. With it, you can set up characters in a space, assign them voices, select camera angles, have the characters move through the space, set where the characters are looking, and give them dialog. The current version of xtranormal is more limited. They call the concept "text to movie".