Sometimes the right tool comes along just at the right time to make something happen. In the case of Ceridwen Productions, that tool was Celtx. Over the course of several years of producing live theatrical works we had assembled a very talented team of writers. Given that our live productions were often spread out over a wide geographical area in the northeast United States, our writers sent in their works from several hundred miles from the home office.
When we began our forays into film production it became very apparent that we would need a way to collaborate on the script. What wasn't immediately obvious was how important it would be for our production teams to have instant feedback on what demands were being placed on them as the script evolved. Enter Celtx. We stumbled across a reference to this on an industry news site during the beta testing phase, and decided to give it a try. The first hurdle which we expected was that our production teams preferred their Macintosh computers, while our post-production experts relied on Windows-based PC's. Celtx runs flawlessly on both platforms, and presents the information identically on both so that we can exchange ideas without the confusion of different interfaces.The scriptwriting aspects of Celtx gave us an additional, unexpected benefit. None of our writers had ever worked in the screenplay format before: Celtx took care of that for us! With surprising swiftness we grasped what the interface was trying to tell us about industry standard format, and almost within the first project we had achieved the professional, standard format that has served countless writers before us.
Add to all this the fact that the writers can specify their thoughts on prop needs, wardrobe, and even set design and sound effects as they type. Our pre-production teams, scattered as they were across a four-state area, found it immensely helpful to look at a picture and description of a given prop rather than simply have to deduce from its reference in the script what it was supposed to look like. The ability to quickly and automatically generate department-specific lists that kept up to date with the latest changes and revisions made it possible for the pre-production departments to always have the latest information at their fingertips so long as they had a connection to the internet handy.
Ceridwen Productions produced 5 short films during 2005 which made extensive use of Celtx. Without the automatic formatting, online collaboration, and production reference capabilities of the program, we would not have been able to achieve this much, and at this level of quality, in such a short timeframe.
