make poetry movies now

Apologies for those of you who already know about this. Xtranormal's free Text-to-Movie site was drawn to my attention by this post on Momus's website. The tagline for the product reads If you can type, you can make movies, and that seems to be an accurate description.

There are sets, actors and sounds available, and I believe an element of control over camera angles. You drag and drop the available animations, provide the text for them to speak, choose voices, and the software automatically provides the lip-sync. You can start your search here, although there are a few examples in the comments on Momus's blog.

Although I haven't so far seen any poets using the software I think there's a lot of scope there. The short films I have seen are especially good at awkward lacunae, offensive statements delivered with the same deadpan affect as quotidia, and flat-out nonsense, which can all be used productively by poets. I'd be all over it myself, but the site suggests it's only available for Windows at present, and as I have a Mac that doesn't run Windows I can't really use it.

For once I'm jealous of those of you with Windows, and that doesn't happen much.