6. Xtranormal

For my Xtranormal project, I decided to create two videos of one and a half minutes each. I felt like this was a better option, as it would be more interesting.

The first one, Indian Taker, is a somewhat humorous one about an Indian Robot. It uses stereotypes as jokes throughout, and uses a variety of actions, shots, expressions and various other features of Xtranormal. This one is interview of sorts, and the character is talking to the camera for the entire 1.5 minutes. Some people may find it offensive, so WARNING if you are one of those people. I also critised parts of xtranormal in the video.

In the second one, Funky Music Night, I chose a TV show approach. I titled the show Funky Music Night, as FMN appears behind the characters, so I created a title around that. This one is a talk show type thing, where the host has a DJ on the show, and premieres his new film clip. The interviewer tries to find common ground with the DJ, by using words from what she thinks is his discourse. She fails however. I also used a variety of features of Xtranormal in this. I used music in this one, and I inserted a scene in the middle, which was somewhat long-winded and vexatious to do. Note this film doesn’t keep up the illusion of the TV show, as I decided to sometimes have the shot be from a camera that wasn’t part of the TV show. I did this as there simply wasn’t enough camera angles to keep in the TV show world without it becoming bland.

Overall I'm rather happy with my two videos, although I did find Xtranormal very annoying. I lost whole scenes of work merely because there was an error in the program, and it wouldn’t let me render the scene. I do really like Indian Taker though. I feel like it is a good use of the software, as it harnesses the positive aspects of the program. The main problem I had with the software though was the inability to have character movement (to have the characters move around the locations). Scenes just felt so structured and bland without it. Another improvement I suggest would be the ability enter the amount of time an action or pause should go for (like in seconds). This would greatly improve the program. More actions and voices are also needed. Especially with better vocab, I continuously had to dumb down and change my script as my word choice was out of this programs range. Exhale. It was also annoying that I couldn't enter diacritical marks into the program all the time. Sometimes entering an eñe for example, just wouldn't work. Sometimes I had to misspell words to get the program to say it correctly (for example, I had to enter 'halapenyo', to have 'jalapeño' pronounced more correctly (note I didn't use this in the end)) Other times I went to create a movie, and it simply said 'Problem Creating movie', and nothing could be done.