Thanks to a curious click form a Tony Hirst tweet, I briefly whizzed by xtranormal an interesting web app for creating/directing/producing/gaffering your own virtual movies:

Xtranormal’s mission is to bring movie-making to the people. Everyone watches movies and we believe everyone can make movies. Movie-making, short and long, online and on-screen, private and public, will be the most important communications process of the 21st century and its democratization is a massive business opportunity. Our revolutionary approach to movie-making builds on an almost universally held skill””typing. You type something; we turn it into a movie. On the web and on the desktop.

And all of this rang as 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story material. As I am preparing to do a remote online intro for Dean Shareski’s class this Monday, I am spiffing up the site and re-acquainting myself with old and new tools.

After an hour’s play, I am amazed as this little app, which almost belongs n a category of its own. Again, it’s tagline is “If You Can Type Text, You Can Create a Movie” which is not quite true. You also have to know how to click your mouse. So when you create a movie, you get to choose if it will be one or two characters, pick a set, music, and avatars for the characters. Now at first reaction, you are going to find it limiting, because there are fixed choices for everything.

But step back- this is another example where limited tools (being boxed in) should make you dig deeper into your creativity, of creating something inside the box, rather than whining about the box.