Further forms are available for greenery, practical effects, explosives, digital effects, production vehicles, character vehicles, animals, craft services, and just about everything else a body could ever need to produce a motion picture, stage play or other performing arts piece. It has forms for describing every prop, every set design, every location, every piece of lighting and camera equipment, and every actor. It aims to be a full-fledged preproduction suite, and it succeeds famously. However, CeltX is not merely a tricked-out word processor. Once the writing is done, the script can be exported to PDF or HTML, retaining its proper formatting, or to plain text (which, alas, loses much of the formatting). The shuffling feature continues to work after the script has been written, making post hoc rearrangement of the script a breeze. CeltX made good use of this paper-world convention by including an Index Cards screen for laying out the scenes and shuffling them around into the correct order before diving in and writing the dialogue. We'd then rearrange things until we got a dramatic structure that seemed to work, and then use the order we settled on as the rough outline for the script. In the old days when we had to work by hand or wrestle with word processor templates, a lot of screenwriters would begin by scribbling one- to two-sentence scene descriptions on index cards and sticking them to a corkboard. Once inside the script editing module proper, users have the option of typing into the template, which formats things properly on the fly, or using the index cards outlining feature-something veteran script writers will find very useful. Adding one of these (or a number of them) to any point in the project is a two-click enterprise and very straightforward. Built-in templates for the four major types of scripts in common usage are included: Screenplays, Stage Plays, Radio Plays and A/V scripts (these are used for advertisements and other narrated visual media). When it comes to the work of actually creating the script, CeltX does a marvelous job. All of CeltX's description elements are similarly thorough. The scene element, which actually continues on for quite a bit longer than can fit in a screenshot. The forms have fields for everything you'd expect, and a few things you wouldn't-physical description, a graphics field for a photo or concept sketch, the role(s) that the character plays in the drama, motivations, goals, family background, education, habits and vices, and likes and dislikes.įigure 4. For example, detailed forms for creating character dossiers are included. This ability to organize different items hierarchically doesn't stop with the text sheets-a number of writing aids are available for adding to the pile and to make organization easier. Beginning with a “text editor” that works more like a stripped-down version of Writer than it does like gedit, writers can input their notes organized in whatever way they find most useful-for example, creating a separate text file for every subplot or for every character's individual arc, in order to concentrate on the different threads of the story before marrying them together. After some early failed experiments with proprietary file formats, the project settled on an open system based on Mozilla and using XML, HTML and open-standards graphics formats to do its work.įar more sophisticated than a mere document template, CeltX has all the tools a writer needs to develop a script from a single line concept through to a salable final draft. Last summer, however, a new tool emerged from a tortuous two-year beta period and attained usability-CeltX.ĬeltX is the brainchild of a Newfoundland-based company that formed in 2005 and aimed to create the ultimate open-source screenwriting and preproduction program. None of these tools run on Linux without a bottle full of Wine and a couple good shots of whiskey, and even then your mileage may vary. However, the resulting commercial tools, such as Final Draft, are expensive and many have a reputation for being difficult to use and (in some cases) unreliable. In recent years, a number of commercial tools have grown up to address this need. Writing a proper script requires a specialized tool, and specialized tools are expensive. Simultaneous Dialogue from the Forthcoming ArtisticWhispers Film Down From Ten
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