This book is about dreams: yours, mine, all sorts of creative people's dreams. Today's inexpensive yet powerful software, computers, cameras, and so forth create visual productions—whether they are movies, audio-visual, audio plays, stage presentations, and more—and now bring them within the reach of most of us.
Here's the secret for turning an amateurish mish mash into a sharp professional piece people will pay you money for—write it down. Script it. In that aspect, Celtx makes dreams come true.
Writing screenplays—especially the free part—is what first attracted me to Celtx a few years ago. However, Celtx is much more than just script writing software! Here are just a few of the many things you can create with Celtx automatically formatted to industry standards:
- Feature movie screenplays
- Television shows
- Stage plays
- Audio-visual productions
- Podcasts
- Comic books
- Documentaries
- Commercials
Some of these things will make you money, and some you will just do for fun. These and more we'll look at in the course of this book—how to do them, what to do with them (marketing tips), and all sorts of other good stuff. We'll have fun, all while becoming downright proficient with Celtx.
While this book emphasizes Celtx as script formatting software, the entire package adds production scheduling, story visualization tools, and more—all of which we'll see in action and use.
In the Overview section of the official Celtx website (http://celtx.com/overview.html), the Celtx developers describe this software package as "the world's first all-in-one media pre-production system.” We are told that Celtx:
- Can be used for the complete production process
- Lets you write scripts, storyboard scenes, and sketch setups
- Develop characters, breakdown and tag elements
- Schedule productions plus generate useful reports
Celtx is powerful software yet simple to use. It can be used in writing the various types of scripts already mentioned, including everything independent film makers and media creators of all types need. This includes writing, planning, scheduling, and generating reports during the various stages of all sorts of productions. The following screenshot is an example of a Celtx report screen:
An important concept of Celtx's power is that it's a client-server application. This means only part of Celtx is in that download installed on your computer. The rest is out there in the cloud (the latest buzz term for servers on the Internet). Cloud computing (using remote servers to do part of the work) allows Celtx to have much more sophisticated features, in formatting and collaboration especially, than is normally found in a relatively small free piece of software. It's rather awesome actually and we'll see how it works throughout this book.
A major reason Celtx can be an open source program is that it is built on non-proprietary standards, such as HTML and XML (basic web mark-up languages) and uses other open source programs (specifically Mozilla's engine, the same used in the Firefox browser) for basic operations.
Celtx is really a web application. We have the advantage of big computers on the web doing stuff for us instead of having to depend on the much more limited resources of our local machine. This also means that improvements in script formats (as final formatting is done out on the web somewhere for you) are yours even if you haven't updated your local software. Yes, we'll discuss this more to better get our heads around it, but it's very much to your advantage.
In writing scripts, getting it in the industry standard format is critically important, especially if you're trying to sell scripts to producers or getting an agent interested in representing your work.
Celtx generates your finished scripts as a PDF file (automatically sending your script out on the web, converting it to PDF in the proper format for whichever type of project you are writing, and back to your computer very quickly indeed). We then have a nice finished product like the one shown in the following screenshot, which is a snippet from one of my own scripts:
Scene heading, action, character names, dialog—Celtx puts it all in exactly the right format for you!
The name Celtx, by the way is an acronym for Crew, Equipment, Location, Talent, and XML.
Celtx is supported by the Celtx community of volunteer developers and a Canadian company, Greyfirst Corp. in St. John's, Newfoundland.
The Celtx website says that more than 500,000 media creators in 160 countries use Celtx in 33 different languages. Independent filmmakers and studio professionals, and students in over 1,800 universities and film schools have adopted Celtx for teaching and class work submission.
Chapter 1, Obtaining and Installing Celtx. By the end of this chapter, we will have a fully running version of Celtx, ready for action and know which of the six major project types to use depending on what we want to accomplish! Celtx, by the way, has you covered for PC, Mac, all kinds of Linux, and even eeePC Netbooks, as shown in the following screenshot:
Chapter 2, All Those Wonderful Writing Features. We learn all the features that aid in writing, such as the various editing formats, using the electronic index cards, templates, the typeset feature, and more ways Celtx helps free you up to create, by taking a lot of the drudgery out. The index cards, for example (see the following screenshot), are great for plot notes, keeping track of characters, and so on:
Chapter 3, Visualizing Productions Ahead of Time. Using the built-in storyboarding techniques, attaching media files (pictures to describe costumes for example, or an audio file showing how a bit of dialog should really sound), and all the other pre-production visualization techniques in Celtx. Storyboarding lets us actually draw a representation of what the setup for a scene looks like (like the following scene setup)—a great aid in planning production:
Chapter 4, Tools for Getting Organized. By the end of this chapter, we will be able to schedule production activities and generate reports based on your scripts using the scheduling features in Celtx. We'll also have the ability to move documents between projects, and understand how to create or add custom tools.
Chapter 5, Tooling Up for Scriptwriting. We explore and learn about the basic menus, as shown in the following screenshot, and tools provided by Celtx to make our writing experience much easier:
Chapter 6, Advanced Celtx. We will look at adding and working with multiple projects in a single container, importing scripts in detail, and taking a comprehensive look at exporting scripts.
Chapter 7, Writing Movies with Celtx. This chapter shows us how to use the features of Celtx for outlining and writing an entertainment industry standard feature movie script, short film, or animation—all properly formatted and ready to market. We will actually start a script and learn practical, real-world examples.
To emphasize, this chapter shows not just how to format a script but how to write a screenplay (for feature or short). The very best way of all to learn about both Celtx and writing scripts is by following real world examples. I've got several scripts in progress and completed, which we'll share as examples, as shown in the following illustration:
Chapter 8, Documentaries and Other Audio Visual Projects. Writing documentaries and other nonfiction scripts is a bit different than movies. Celtx's integral Audio-Visual editor is perfect for docs, commercials, public service spots, video tutorials, slide shows, light shows, or just about any other combination of visual and other content (not just sound).
Chapter 9, Raising the Curtain on Plays. Plays are pretty much like movies except for the car chase scenes (just kiddin'). There are differences but Celtx assists us in mastering and writing for the stage.
Chapter 10, Audio Plays, Podcasts, and Other Great Sounds. Celtx's Audio Play editor makes writing radio or other audio plays a breeze. It's perfect also for radio commercials or spots, and absolutely more than perfect for podcasts. Podcasts are easy to write, require minimal knowledge to produce, and are a snap to put on the Internet. Learn all that and more in this chapter.
Chapter 11, WAP! POW! BANG! Writing Comic Books with a Punch. How to use Celtx in writing comic books, graphic novels, comic strips, or any other mode of this widely popular method of storytelling. We comic fans know that writing for comic books is very close to writing for the movies. In fact, for a writer, marketing scripts for the comics is at least somewhat easier and has less competition than trying to sell a script.
Chapter 12, Marketing Your Scripts. Okay, your script is finished and polished, looks and reads great. So? How do you sell your baby? This chapter gives you some of my hard-won secrets in marketing—how to inexpensively get the attention of agents, managers, producers, and others who will not only read your script but actually pay you money if they like it.
Appendix A, List of Recommended Books on Screenwriting and Productions and Online Resources. This appendix provides a comprehensive list of some recommended books and also useful online resources on screenwriting, which will help you to learn and grow as a screenwriter and/or movie professional.
Appendix B, Celtx's New Web Look and Smartphone Apps. Celtx offers a new add-on. It's an app (application) that allows you to write scripts on your Smartphone and synchronize it with Celtx on your desktop or laptop computer. This appendix also shows you the new look of Celtx's official website.
Appendix C, Future Development of Celtx. This appendix will give you information about the future developments in Celtx.
Appendix D, Pop Quiz Answers. The answers to the pop quiz are given in this appendix.