Film making is an expensive business. Not only in terms of equipment, which immediately puts film making out of the reach of your average Joe, but also in terms of the basics, the tools you need to get the process started in the first place: write a script, draw the storyboards, put together a schedule.
Without the appropriate computer tools, these tasks can become laborious at best, and creatively crippling at worst. And these tools, until now, had been some of the most ridiculously expensive pieces of software, catering only for a well off elite.
However, help is at hand. Celtx (www.celtx.com) is an amazing new suite of tools designed to give first-time filmmakers a fighting chance against the big studios.
Thanks to this new suite of production tools, filmmakers no longer need to criminalise their production process by using illegal, pirated tools.
Celtx, an open-source program, offers a variety of different tools to help assemble all of your information to make your movie as efficiently as possible.
Scripting, storyboarding, scheduling and other production plan elements are all included in this easy-to-use software, which - thanks to its open source roots - is guaranteed to improve and refine itself over time as users provide feedback, to help in its refinement, whenever new problems occur.
Part of the appeal of the CeltX tools lies in the "Project Central", a website dedicated to users of the program.
Here you can discuss issues with other users and read through projects created by your peers. The tools are analysed, and tutorials guide you through any problems or difficulties.
The program's layout is great, linking your script and production tools so that you have a simple, effective interface with which to integrate all of your production components.
Your script links seamlessly with your storyboard, and your budget links with your script, so that every page can be analysed both in terms of visuals, cost and the resources required to make it happen, as well as the actors and crew necessary to get it made.
CeltX is a new approach to the production process which gives enormous power to young filmmakers to bring their projects together and get the most out of their ideas. This is a brilliant project management tool that can be applied to almost any creative field, giving you a great way to organise your ideas into a structure, and see the full potential of your story unfold as you build your project into a film you can actually make!
Go grab it, get down a little story, and see how very easy it is.
first published September 25, 2007 Edition 1 Cape Times, Techno Times. email bigeyeddeer2007@gmail.com
