Celtx 2.5 out November 8, 2009
Posted by James D Hartland in Celtx.1 comment so far
If you read my first blog post about the free application Celtx, I was hoping that it would get feature parity with Final Draft within a year, sadly that never happened, and a few years later Final Draft (and Movie Magic) are still slightly ahead in features. Though you have to take into account Celtx does way more than simply script formatting, acting as a one stop pre-production suite, so to bemoan the slow development of the screenwriting aspect is perhaps a little unfair. Either way, slowly but surely Celtx is getting there, and I’m sure it will eventually get there, when you consider how many years it was between new versions of FD and MM.
The newest version of Celtx is out, with the biggest new feature for screenwriters probably being revision tracking.
Revision Mode can be used to lock scene numbers while editing a script. You can also track changes using colour coded edits.
- Toolbar – a new toolbar will appear when you are in the Revision Mode
- R+ Increments – ability to increment revisions with one click
- Rev Label – you can assign any name to the Revision
- Colour Edits – edits in Revision Mode can be colour coded
- Scene Numbers – nested Locked Scene numbering that supports Hollywood (A/B), Numeric (1.2.1), or create your own template.
- Scene Fixer – provides an easy way to manually fix any scene numbers
- Display Marks – choose between ‘All Marks’, ‘Current’, or ‘Hide’ to track colour edits
- Omit Scenes – omit any scene
- Reset – resets the script back to standard editing mode
Celtx might not yet be the best screenwriting application money can buy, but when you consider it is free and gets the job done just fine, it’s hard to knock it for anyone who doesn’t wanna invest £165 in an application just to write scripts.
You can read about all the new features in 2.5 here.
Celtx 2.0 ships February 26, 2009
Posted by James D Hartland in Celtx, Final Draft.2 comments
With perfect timing, just as I get some weird bug in Final Draft that is stopping it from creating PDFs I see that the newest version of Celtx has come out. Now sporting the name 2.0 it features a bunch of tweaks and a new online storage and collaboration thingymajig.
Check out the full release notes for the full run down on new features in this totally free & open source screenwriting (and preproduction) application.
As for Final Draft, I’ll have to uninstall it and see if I can get the damn thing to work again.
UPDATED: A blog about script editing & other news January 23, 2009
Posted by James D Hartland in Career, Celtx, Emmerdale, Script Editor, Soap, TV.add a comment
I’ve been putting off writing a blog for a while now because I was hoping to have some news to be able to tell you, but that hasn’t gone to plan. I’m waiting to hear back about everything I was going to blog about, like my recent job interview.
Last time I blogged I referenced that I had an interview for a big show that gets 7-8 million viewers. Well I may as well reveal that was yet another interview on Emmerdale, this time for the more appropriate job role of Script Editor.
A position Skillset describes as:
Script Editors provide a critical overview of the screenwriting process, and liaise between the Producer or Development Executive and the Screenwriter. Script Editors do not offer solutions, but instead use their analytical skills to help Screenwriters identify problems, explain the potential consequences of Screenwriters’ choices, and thereby help to strengthen and develop screenplays.
More of the Skillset summery here
I’ve yet to hear back from Emmerdale about the job so I am assuming I haven’t got it. Hopefully I’m being too hasty in this opinion though. That job would have been a great jumping off point for my career and the pay was very respectable (28k starting salary going up with experience).
It’s funny, soap is not really a style of storytelling that has interested me as a writer in the past, but in doing some sample editing for the producers prior to the interview I came to realise that when it comes to editing the scripts at least, it was just as rewarding as working on any other type of script, as you were still asking yourself the same basic questions like “How can I increase the conflict in this scene to its maximum?”
One thing I came to realise though is just how lovely feature film formatting is. I have obviously read stuff written in other script formats before but it wasn’t until I was working on the scripts that I came to realise how horrible the TV soap script formatting is. Everything from the way they are laid out on the page to the way there are never any line breaks in the action paragraphs even when the two actions are performed in different parts of the location, it’s just not very clever IMO.
Update: Seems I was too hasty to blog about not getting the job. After the recent changes at Emmerdale they have put back making a choice on the new script editor for a few weeks. Fingers crossed…
In Other News
I’m still waiting to hear back from the bigwig, critically acclaimed production company that asked me to send them some of my work. Having spoken to the producer it seems that I’ll have an answer on that front in the next week or so, until then nothing really to report.
I guess I could stop being so vague about who these companies are that I talk about but I dunno, I always think I should wait until something comes from these opportunities before I talk about them with specifics. Fingers crossed I’ll have some good news to report soon.
Celtx
In other other news, I was hoping to be able to blog about Celtx 1.1 coming out, but from talking to one of the developers it seems that the next release is coming later that month. It’s been well over 6 months since the last release so hopfully there will be a lot of big juicy changes to report. If nothing else the app has been ported over to the Firefox 3 codebase (Celtx like Songbird, Miro and several other apps is based on Firefox code) so the app should be faster, prettier, and generally better.
Celtx 1.0 is released! June 5, 2008
Posted by James D Hartland in Celtx, Final Draft, Pre-production, Software.2 comments
Celtx (pronounced “Celtics” with a hard C), everyone’s favourite, free script writing and pre production application for Windows, Mac and Linux has finally been updated to version 1.0, which means it’s now feature complete. (Until they start adding new feature towards the next mile stone release at least!)
Based purely on the release notes and a quick 5 minute play it seems there are two new features specifically for screenwriters with this update, an improved index card/scene navigation and a rather swanky new Notes side bar which looks like a much improved way to write and review notes on your script. All the other features are more to do with the pre-production side of things. (Release notes here)
Although I never talk about the pre-production side of Celtx because as screenwriters it doesn’t really matter to us, really the impetus for creating Celtx was to make an application that integrated all the various parts of pre-production into one application built around the screenplay. Because of this there are all kinds of tools in it for syncing storyboards to the script and creating shooting schedules and stuff like that which make Celtx far more than just a straight up screenwriting app. So like I say, a lot of the new features are to do with that rather than the screenwriting element of the software.
Thankfully the developers of Celtx have done a great job at making it in such a way that you can use it simply as a robust screenwriting application and never even know there are all these other powerful script report generating tools and what not. I have no doubts that even as it becomes a more powerful pre-production app it will always remain first and foremost a really great screenwriting application.
Everyday I get at least one person finding their way to this blog after googling the topic of downloading a bootleg, pirate version of Final Draft. All those people should just download Celtx. It is mature enough now it has reached 1.0 that it will meet the needs of all but the most demanding professional writers.
Movie Magic has been updated? WTF? November 22, 2007
Posted by James D Hartland in Celtx, Final Draft, Movie Magic, Software.7 comments
I just finished writing a blog post about the latest version of Celtx, in which I mentioned that the only other real competitor to FinalDraft besides Celtx was Movie Magic which wasn’t really very good competition at all (in terms of generating any innovation) since it hasn’t been updated in years and years and years.
Well it turns out that Movie Magic has been updated after all! Version 6 came out recently!
I don’t know what the story was with Movie Magic but the fact it hadn’t been updated in years always seemed really strange to me. I had jokingly assumed the guys who made Movie Magic were dead or something because the software was hardly new when I first started taking an interest in writing many years ago and it was still the same version of the software last time I checked them out a few months back.
I mean don’t get me wrong, Screenwriting software doesnt need to be updated all the time, its just formatting text after all and that never really changes. But a new version every 3 or 4 years doesn’t seem unreasonable. In a similar time frame between the versions of Movie Magic Adobe managed to put out 5 new versions of Photoshop!
Hence my surprise today to go look up the Movie Magic website and find that a new version has in fact come out!
So what exactly have they added in all these years?
Well you can see a detailed list here but the only thing that jumps out at me as something I’ve not seen in any other product is real-time online collaboration where one person can see all the changes being made in real-time. But isn’t there’s loads of 3rd party solutions out there that let people collaborate and share one desktop via the internet? So really you could do this today with Celtx or Final Draft or anything else fairly easily.
The other feature that jumped out to me was the new bookmarking system, which has the potential to be pretty useful since I find the lack of any easy way to navigate your screenplay with all the current apps to be a huge oversight. In fact that sorta problem needing to be solved is exactly what I mean when I say there’s a lack of innovation in this field.
Not wanting to base my views on scan reading the new feature list I think I’ll download the demo of the newest version when I get a chance and see how it compares to the current Final Draft 7. To be honest I’m not that big of a fan of Final Draft, I think it’s really clunky, but it happens to be the best of a bad lot, which I guess is why I champion Celtx so much. I want to see Celtx add some innovation to the industry and make Final Draft buck their ideas up.
So I guess I’ll say watch this space and I’ll maybe have a review of it in the future.
Celtx v.0.966 November 22, 2007
Posted by James D Hartland in Bootleg, Celtx, Final Draft, Movie Magic, Software.3 comments
Just thought I’d write a quick blog to say that a new version of Celtx came out last week. No new features were introduced to write home about, really it was just a bug fix but it’s worth pointing out non the less.
I still don’t think Celtx is ready to replace Final Draft anytime soon (for professionals anyhow), but it’s getting there, slowly but surely, and if nothing else it will give Final Draft some competition. I mean how old is the current version of Movie Magic 2000? The clue is in the name! There’s zero innovation in the screenwriting software industry because Final Draft have it all to themselves, some competition will do the industry the world of good. And one day Celtx might actually end up a better product than Final Draft, without even taking into account the price difference (Celtx is totally free).
Speaking of which…
Everyday I see people finding their way to this blog after googling about illegal downloads of Final Draft. All these people should just go download Celtx. It’s totally free and unless you are a professional writer you wont miss any features.
Celtx 0.95 finally here! – Updated September 14, 2007
Posted by James D Hartland in Celtx, Index Cards, Software.add a comment
The newest version of everyone’s favourite free Screenwriting package is finally released. The most prominent new features are index cards and dual dialogue, as well as a bunch of other screenwriting templates like TV and Radio.
If anyone doesn’t have a copy of Final Draft I urge you to try Celtx as it is fast becoming a great alternative.
Updated: I just downloaded the latest version and saw something I missed on the press release earlier. The way Celtx handles PDF output, and a preview of the printed results (Under the “typset” tab) is much improved over older versions of Celtx. In fact the press release says it might be the biggest new addition. It still kinda sucks compared to how Final Draft handles PDF output as a matter of fact, but its getting there, slowly but surely.
