The Celtx Blog

New Norwegian Friend(s)

Svein Wisnaes, is a Norwegian TV producer and photographer who recently discovered Celtx. He liked it sooooo much, he bought the company!.... I'M JUST KIDDING!!!... that's just a poor sample of my humour as related to the slogan made famous in 1979 by Victor Kiam (who actually did buy the Remington company because he liked their electric shavers so much!)

But it is true that Svein liked Celtx sooooo much, .... that he wrote wonderful things about it. So we encourage you to visit his blog and find out what he had to say.
Thank You, Svein for your support!
Sheila

Update:
Svein has recently informed us that Volda University College (Norway) is now installing Celtx on all PC�s in their Media Department. They are teaching journalism for newspapers, radio, TV and have a separate department for Documentary Production and Animation.
Tusen takk, Volda!

Celtx PDF/Server-side Features Implemented

We're like, thrilled to announce that we have now deployed the PDF generator to the Celtx server. This is a total re-implementation using XSL, and LaTeX, featuring:
* Mores and continueds, including in-page continueds
* Bold and Italic
* Scene numbering (left/right/both)
* Page numbering
* Sensible pagebreaking that should minimize widows & orphans
* Revised text sizing and positioning ie. things like margins, font-size, line length, and interline spacing, etc.

Some of these features were added because users requested them en masse, and others were implemented to address issues that required refining. And, as server-side additions, part of the beauty of it all is that there's no need to download the application again! All the features are reflected in the PDF automatically when you select File->Generate PDF. For more details, head on over to the Forum.

We thank you all very much for your patience on this one, and as always, we look forward to your feedback.

Cheers!
The Celtx Team

Celtx Users by Country

I thought people might be interested to see a pie chart I've been toying with that shows 'Celtx users by Country'.

Living as we do on a relatively small and decidedly barren pile of rocks in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, about as far removed from the mainstream as you can get without being in a boat, we are constantly in awe of the internationalization of Celtx. It is, for us at least, one of the most interesting aspects of what we are doing.

Based on a snapshot taken in mid February, we have users in 89 countries. Our friends to the South represent just under half of our active users, with Japan, the UK, Canada (Go Canada!) and Italy forming a second tier with about the same number of users each. Next comes Brazil, Germany, Australia, France, Spain and Finland.

Oh, and we have Celtx being translated in to two new languages � so that will make 17.

Neat.

Firefox Flicks Participation Update

From the Firefox Flicks Backstage Blog:

In our ongoing efforts to promote the Firefox Flicks Ad Contest and to engage our community of participants with opportunities to share their work and to win early prizes, we're reaching out and asking for updates from all of our current participants.

We're very much interested in hearing from you about the progress of your entry and we'd also like to extend an opportunity to share your Firefox Flicks experience with our community here at the Firefox Flicks Backstage Blog.

Participants who are willing to share some 'behind the scenes' photos or commentary with our Flicks audience will be eligible for some great prizes including Firefox swag packs from the Mozilla Store, (we've got T-shirts, backpacks, stickers, baseball caps, sweatshirts, books and more,) as well as gift packs from some of our Friends of Firefox Flicks.

If you aren't interested in the added exposure of a production profile or behind the scenes post at the Backstage Blog, we're still interested in hearing from you about your experience producing a Firefox Flicks 30 second ad so please let us know what you're working on, what format you're using, and how it's going with an email to ad-support@mozilla.com.

And don't hesitate to let us know if you have any further questions about the contest, either here in the comments or in an email.

Zero2infinity Films Adopt Celtx in Australia

We'd like to extend a warm welcome and our thanks to our new Australian buddies Ross, Ron and Stephen over at Zero2infinity Films for writing this Celtx review. The guys will be using Celtx as their official screenwriting and production planning software.
How sweet it is!

Cheers, Mates!

Celtx User Comitar, 'Bets' The Shop

Indie filmmaker, Chris Van Patten of Comitar Studios is a busy and impressive fellow. Not only is he a loyal user of Celtx and valued contributor to our forum, but he's also a script writer, director, web designer, programmer and entrepreneur (and that's when he's not in school!). Recently Chris released a short film he directed called The Bet (trailer), based on the Anton Chekhov story of the same name. On the making of this film, Van Patten said,

We utilized Celtx all during preproduction (and I used it during post, to figure out where my footage went -- I never had my own personal printed script during the whole production). Celtx is an amazing tool, and will definitely help change the face of independent preproduction. I only wish we had version 0.95 when we were in production!

AND, if that's not enough, to assist with the distribution of his film, two days ago Van Patten announced the opening of his own online store called The Comitar Shop. The objective of The Shop is to facilitate the purchase and download of videos, music, and other types of media with DRM-free (Digital Rights Management) downloads and by offering Creative Commons licensing options that are associated with each file. Sounds like a reasonable and hassle-free alternative to me.

So major kudos to you, Chris Van Patten. We anxiously await to see what other brilliant ideas you have up your sleeve.

Sheila et al

The Ant Farm Discovers Celtx

Over at the Ant Farm, Darren has just discovered Celtx.... and he seems to like it....

....last night I found a new (to me) program titled Celtx, and to be honest it's pretty impressive. It offers what I really wanted to do with the Saint Louis 6 Communial editing, basically everyone involved with the show's creative process would have say so in how it's written. Celtx offers this along with a ton of other interesting features that Final Draft dosn't do very well or flat out dosn't have.

Read more

self-reliant filmmaking reviews "Celtx!"

Today Paul Harrill of self-reliant filmmaking posted a good review of celtx 0.9.5.1 along with some recommedations. (Damn those MOREs and CONT'Ds!)

Thank you, Paul for sharing your thoughts and for taking the time to give Celtx a thorough kick.

Check it out, people.

Sheila

Apply Celtx, Stat! - Med Students use Celtx in Digital Video Training

Over at Digital Signposts, Theo sings the praises of Celtx and talks about how he uses the software to help train medical students in the making of digital videos. Smart fellow, that Theo ;)

Islands Not in the Sun

Like Firefox itself, Celtx attracts users from all over the globe. In fact, almost 35% of our users are non-English speaking - Italian, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Faroese.

Huh? Faroese?

Yup, Faroese, as in the Faroe Islands a group of rocky, cliff lined islands that lie northwest of Scotland, halfway between Iceland and Norway. Apparently they make a lot of films there - or at least there's a lot or people using Celtx to make films there.

Which is really cool given all the similarities between the Faroe Islands and the place where Celtx was born - namely Newfoundland, Canada

Both places can trace their roots to the Vikings (the Faroese language has its roots in the Old Norse language from the Viking Age and Newfoundland has a world UNESCO site where the first North American settlement by the Vikings is located), fishing is the mainstay of both places, there are both sparsely populated and both places have a Hell of a lots of rocks.

We're really glad to have fellow Islanders aboard! Thanks to all our Celtx users 'Across the Pond'.

Mark