Zen Spelled Backwards: BP4

Dvolver Moviemaker AKA DFilm

I have loaded and tested so many applications here, looking for a new tool, a "killer app", and frankly found that most of them are highly redundant. We already use facebook, twitter, google docs, diigo, utube and all the rest, and I think, given collective intelligence, these are most likely the superior apps. Anything that is simply derivative of these would need quantum level improvements to be useful.

My other dilemma is that my CBR project is unrelated to my working environment, and so I vacillate between looking for tools for one and then the other. I finally decided that the Schmience project will be best served with those most common tools, but that I might find something to add to my Film Production course. So I revisited much of what I had evaluated with two directions in mind: tools that they could use to brand themselves and market their work, and tools to teach film making and storytelling. The marketing part again ends up needing common broad-based tools so I ended up looking for a teaching tool.

Most of my students lack very much understanding of film grammar and story structure, and after messing with a number of collaborative tools they might use to share storyboard or film criticism, like StoryBoard Pro and Director's Notebook both of which I will probably begin using with Chemical Wedding's wonderful Artemis smartphone app we have been using. But these are not really web tools, as they have no essential online or collaborative components.

So I decided a very simple, fast storytelling tool might allow them to discover more of what is most essential in making a story work. I looked at xtranormal, cool but expensive. Goanimate, too open ended, makebeliefscomix, also too open ended, animoto, stupidly redundant and limited, and many others finally deciding on dvolver moviemaker or Dfilm.

What appeals to me is that all the artistry, such as it is, of making a video is already set. There are a very limited set of choices to make, and so we will be able to look at their various dfilms - apples to apples, with just the details of the story telling at issue. It may be too limited, leading to nothing but one-line jokes, but I suspect film students might try to pry as much story into the form as they can. I've included screen shots form each step in the process.

First you select a setting from 16 backgrounds and 12 skys.

I picked the Burning Man background and a realistic sky. Choosing some of the weird skys, like giant falling roses, could give various very surreal effects.

Next you pick from four possible plots. A pretty loose usage of the word here, but plots they are I suppose.
I chose rendezvous.

There are thirty three possible characters to choose from.
For character 1, I chose the bear.

For character 2, I chose a surly little Santa Claus.
The possible selections in all for these categories so far suggest a common use for this tool might be flirtatious, but love stories are certainly a staple of dramaturgy.

Dialogue is limited to 100 characters, in this plot, 2 are required and it allows for 4 more. I've done an urban take on Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. I met this play in 1964 in an outdoor amphitheater at the Valyermo Fall Festival held at a benedictine monastery in the Mojave desert. I had attended the festival for years with my best friend, whose father was a devout Catholic. Mine was a devout atheist, and this Godot was the year after he died. He was an actor who had traded his performance as Santa Claus with a friend who owned a toy store in exchange for xmas gifts for me and my sisters. Hence this.