Text-to-Movie(tm)

January 4, 2009 12:53 AM

If you can type, you can make movies. A website that allows users to create animated movies using text-to-speech scripts and a surprisingly versatile selection of characters, voices, actions, camera shots, etc.
posted by Balonious Assault (42 comments total)

For example (I didn't make that one, but a friend of mine did).

There goes the rest of my weekend.
posted by Balonious Assault at 12:55 AM on January 4 [7 favorites]

O.K. who'll start to make Calvin & Hobbes remakes?
posted by zouhair at 1:34 AM on January 4

I'm going straight to hell.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 1:52 AM on January 4 [19 favorites]

I'm thinking more (Dysfunctional) Family Circus remakes, myself.

What? A man can dream, can't he?
posted by Pinback at 2:28 AM on January 4

Mr. Babbit tells jokes better than I do.
posted by Picklegnome at 3:19 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Was this wrong?
posted by zippy at 3:41 AM on January 4

This is awesome.
The voice transcription for the Japanese voice is pretty good, too. No male voice, though, unfortunately.
posted by greasepig at 3:48 AM on January 4

My take on this deals with the depravity of self, and the resolution of fear through a state of figurative phenomenological release.
posted by gcbv at 4:37 AM on January 4

A reenactment of exlotuseater's deskic identity comment in the deskology thread.
posted by Ryvar at 5:30 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Jesus. One-click publishing to Youtube when you've setup your account correctly - these guys are really going all-out with this. Awesome.
posted by Ryvar at 5:55 AM on January 4

A reenactment of Ryvar's reenactment of exlotuseater's deskic identity comment in the deskology thread.
posted by sveskemus at 6:21 AM on January 4

Oh man, this is cool. I look forward to seeing what other twisted videos Metafilter users come up with.
posted by Corduroy at 6:36 AM on January 4

Put me down on the hater list. Can't wait for the marketing victims in my life to hear about this and think I'm out of business as a guy who occasionally does 3D animation/modelling for people.
posted by autodidact at 6:42 AM on January 4

CWAA for the win!
posted by littleredwagon at 6:54 AM on January 4

A dream I had about 10 years ago.
posted by WolfDaddy at 7:00 AM on January 4

This is beyond awesome and very clever indeed. I have to eat food now elsewhere or I'd be pootling around for ages, but here's my first attempt.
posted by Sparx at 7:13 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

This couldn't possibly be any better specifically for the MeFi audience.
posted by odinsdream at 7:22 AM on January 4

WolfDaddy: Totally awesome.
posted by odinsdream at 7:25 AM on January 4

Thought I'd try to see how far I could push this and attempted a reenactment of a Metafilter comment I made that I really cared about.

Needless to say, despite 4-6 markups per sentence I still hit a pretty solid brick wall on the limits of this thing. The real bitch is the inability to interrupt in-progress animations.
posted by Ryvar at 7:32 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

That is pretty fucking awesome.
posted by grouse at 7:33 AM on January 4

The background music really sells it. This is going to be fun!
posted by cavalier at 7:59 AM on January 4

A dream I had about 10 years ago

When ever anyone says "I had an interesting dream" you can be assured of two things. They are going to tell you about it and it will not be interesting.
posted by Bonzai at 8:23 AM on January 4 [5 favorites]

Oh man. I'm gonna kill some time with this today.
posted by cortex at 8:54 AM on January 4

Thank you Pastabagel, your classic snark is now in text to speech hilarity
posted by hellojed at 8:57 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

xtranormal.com appears to be totally borked.
posted by nosila at 9:06 AM on January 4

Ha! The computer reads "babysitting" as "babbysitting" in the last line of hellojed's excellent adaptation.
posted by nosila at 10:53 AM on January 4

It finally published my first effort: Wit and Wisdom with the big W, inspired by this post and, specifically, this comment.
posted by nosila at 11:01 AM on January 4

I was more impressed that the text to speech algorithm handled the phrase "Christing fuck"
posted by hellojed at 11:40 AM on January 4

something isn't okay: Firefox can't find the server at www.xtranormal.com
posted by Leo Golan at 11:52 AM on January 4

It won't open for me. One of you broke it!
posted by amyms at 1:32 PM on January 4

This couldn't possibly be any better specifically for the MeFi audience.

Indeed; MeFite fights just got even funnier.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:15 PM on January 4

I saw a certain avatar, and it immediately inspired me to make this.

(There really needs to be a way to audition a block of text before shooting the movie.)
posted by evilcolonel at 2:49 PM on January 4

Er, you can

Just hit action to preview, it renders the movie out, then change the script instead of hitting it's a wrap.
posted by Ryvar at 3:02 PM on January 4

It only gets worse. Part two.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 4:45 PM on January 4

This stuff is golden.
posted by flatluigi at 8:33 PM on January 4

The website suggests that "publishing" movies for free will only be around a short time.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 10:33 PM on January 4

Presenting: The Hobo News network! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Damn, this must be what Trey Parker and Matt Stone feel like. Something stupid just pops into my head and 20 minutes later I have a link to share.
posted by hellojed at 11:53 PM on January 4

I keep thinking this can't be as awesome as it seems but it keeps being so. Thanks!
posted by DU at 8:57 AM on January 5

Indeed; MeFite fights just got even funnier.

I was thinking the same thing. If we could somehow incorporate this into MetaTalk we would have the a powerful engine for entertainment.

Also; evil.
posted by quin at 10:04 AM on January 5 [1 favorite]

Well, here's my best effort so far. It's sure to offend someone.
posted by Balonious Assault at 7:56 AM on January 6

^ hated it.
posted by autodidact at 10:09 AM on January 6 [2 favorites]

The site owners made a video shouting out Mefi (and Reddit) and linking to a few places that have sprung up as xtranormal video blogs or with a lot of content using their video creation site.

CWAA, I was nowhere near a computer, not even really thinking about that video and it popped into my head and I just got that stupid spit-on-yourself laugh. Is that from a show or did you just completely make that up? That is the funniest shit I have seen in a month of Sundays. I know I'm going to be laughing uncontrollably at that for the rest of the year.
posted by cashman at 10:36 PM on January 7