A year ago, I released my film, The Thomas Beale Cipher, online. Since then, many have asked me ‘what’s next?’ Certainly another film seemed like the obvious next step. But I was interested in something else.

Fundamentally, I’m driven to help filmmakers and others tell their stories. With Short of the Week, we’re focused on revolutionizing the way new stories and new voices are discovered. But there’s another side to filmmaking that’s undergoing a major transformation—the ‘making’ side.

So last year, I formed a company called FiftyThree with a group of the industry’s top creators with the mission of building the essential tools for creating. With so much technology focused on execution, we wanted to build tools that get out of our way so we can focus on ideas and stories without having to search for the right drop-down menu.

Creativity > Productivity

Today, I wanted you all to know that we’re launching our first product, Paper—an iPad app. We think it’s the simplest, most beautiful way to create on the new iPad. It helps you capture ideas, notes, storyboards, character designs, wardrobe, and the myriad number of things involved in pre-production. Better yet, you can instantly share your ideas across the web to fan pages on Tumblr and Facebook.

Filmmaker, Qiao Li (2012 award-winner: Kitty & Lala), has been using an early version of Paper to plan and storyboard his next short film, XY_Z:Prologue—a post-apocalyptic sci-fi filmed north of Beijing.

Give Paper a try. And if you like it, give us a nice 5-star review.