The Celtx Blog

Australian Project named this week's POW!

Australian filmmaker Jasmine Adams took time out of her hectic schedule to let us know more about her project which has been selected as this week's POW.

"The Note" is loosely based on a short story called 'The Impossible (Fear)' by Joanne Smyth. It is a story about Amon, who is somewhat of a recluse. He lives alone and is barely polite to his neighbours. His only friend is a blind old woman, equally as bitter and lonely. He is bad tempered and shy to the point of rudeness...and he writes love stories.

According to Jasmine, "It's essentially a story about fear, really, about how fear debilitates and shapes a person. It's the fear of failure, transmuted into the fear of trying. I'm in love with characters that have trouble interacting socially. Amon is an exaggeration of feeling we all have had - we've all had a crush on someone we couldn't bring ourselves to talk to, we've fantasized and we've been afraid. It makes Amon, for all his gruffness, very sympathetic and very accessible. At least, I hope so.
 
Most of the production team are graduates of Curtin University of Technology located in Western Australia. The team includes producer Kate Bailey, who last year produced The Billabong. Jess Fogarty has come on board as a writer/editor and Todd Barrac is helping with the sound. Jasmine's partner George Caspar, the DOP, comes from a purely documentary and wildlife photography background. This should prove an interesting mix with Jasmine's self professed taste for "hyper-stylized" imagery.

Jasmine usually makes documentaries and this is her first time directing a drama that she has written herself. Good luck on your production, gang! I'm sure that all of your hard work will pay off!

Cheers,
Michelle and Celtx Team

This week's POW is from the Ends of the Earth!

Cape Finisterre, Spain, is the final destination for many pilgrims on route to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The primitive sun-worshipers believed Finisterre to be a sacred place where they carried out their rituals. The Romans believed that it was the entrance to Hades and in the days when the world was flat, Finnester was believed to be the end of earth. This week "FINISTERRE" is the Celtx Project of the week, brought to you by a motivated group of students from Galicia, Spain.

The story is takes place on a rock-bound peninsula in the uttermost west of Galicia. A Catholic priest, an altar boy, and a gravedigger find themselves as the last three inhabitants on the planet. With funeral rituals being of great importance to the Galician people, the 3 decide to perform their own burial on a small beach. This poses an interesting question...Who will bury the last one of them?

Subsidized by the XUNTA of Galicia through the Galician Audio-visual Agency, this film will be shot in HD on October 6 and 7. The final version should be ready sometime later this year.

Check out Project Central for an interesting peek inside this production including the script and hand drawn storyboard!

Good luck on with your film shoot!

Michelle and the Celtx Gang

ANNOUNCING THE ARRIVAL OF CELTX V.0995!!!

Greetings to all loyal Celtx fans!

v.0995 IS HERE!
And I gotta say,... we think this baby is great and the parents are pretty proud. The delivery took a bit longer than expected, but we THANK YOU! for your patience.

Some of the highlights include a documentary dual column AV Script editor, a radio/podcasting Audio Play editor, dual dialog and index cards. And then there's the much requested Versioning (Snapshots) and automatic event notification features.

There's lots of goodies in between too (see detailed Release Notes here), but it's probably the new Latex enabled Typeset that constitutes the most innovative feature in this release. Typeset simplifies the process of writing with the click of a button, automatically and precisely laying out what you have written into the desired script format.

Right now, the English version is available in Windows, Mac and Linux. (Apologies to our foreign friends.) Other language versions will be posted as they become available from our super-wonderful volunteer translators.

So along with the other 100,000 independent media creators in 160 countries who create with Celtx, we cordially invite you to ">DOWNLOAD v0995, and as always, encourage everyone to tell us what you think.

In the meantime, we Thank You ALL, for your continued support!

Much love from,
Sheila, Steve, Tony, Michelle, Greg, Chad, Laurie and Mark

Brazilian Project Named Celtx POW!

In just two weeks, with a budget of only 50 dollars, students Giovanna Pezzo and Raul Maciel from São Carlos, Brazil created, produced, shot and edited the project "A Queda."

The video part of this project is an experimental short film called "Exiled." Available on Project Central, it is the story of a French speaking man with amnesia who is lost somewhere in Brazil. The only thing he can remember is that someone or something has fallen.

This film features Raul Maciel as the man in the orange T-shirt and Canadian Patrice Dionne as the lost man. The music featured in this video is from Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons."

Giovanna and Raul are students attending UFSCar, the Federal University of São Carlos. They are in enrolled in the Arts and Communication Department studying image and sound.

"A Queda" ("The Fall") is a production for the course Digital Photography and Video taught by professor and photographer Flávio Sganzerla. Students had only two weeks to develop an idea and write the screenplay. The film was produced and shot in just one weekend.

Raul and Giovanna are interested in global co-productions and are writing additional screenplays that they hope to shoot soon.

Keep your eyes open for more of their work on Project Central in the near future.

Michelle and the Celtx Gang

"Outrunning the Rain" named this week's POW

This week's POW is brought to us by Thomas Wüstemann from Berlin, Germany.

Still in development, Outrunning the Rain is a road movie in the tradition of American literature - from Jack London to the Beat Generation - transported to Germany and the Europe of today to celebrate the freedom of landscape and the multitude of faces and cultures.

In the film, Martin is leaving the city, like he did in the old days - by jumping the freight train. He doesn't know why, but it seems like a good idea to travel through the country. On the freight train he meets Armin, an old traveller, on the road for 10 years, who slowly becomes Martin's mentor. Only as the two split up does Martin realize the true reason why he has been on the road.

This film will be produced in Berlin by Morphium Film. The songs will be written by the great Robert Lee Fardoe, an English songwriter who is currently working in Berlin.

As for the future of this project, Thomas writes, "We're finishing the script and the songs for Armin till the end of the year, then doing one month of storyboarding. In early 2008 we're hopefully closing the financing and finish the organisation - for a 2 or 3 week shoot around June 2008."

You can see full project details at Celtx Project Central.

Good luck gang! We look forward to seeing the finsihed project!

Michelle and the Celtx Team

UPDATE! Celtx Team Members want to See YOU at Creative Screenwriting Expo 6!

Hey Gang!

We're taking the big leap and heading to Hollywood!!!.....
If you're in the Los Angeles neighborhood the last week of October, come join in our excitement as Celtx takes the stage at...

'The World's Largest Conference & Tradeshow for Screenwriters'

Creative Screenwriting Magazine presents Screenwriting Expo 6 from October 24-28, 2007 at the Marriott and the Renaissance Hotels at the Los Angeles Airport.

This fantastic event offers terrific opportunities to network and party with over 4,000 fellow writers, 'Pitch your story to Hollywood', and hear and learn from the Industry's Best in a grand selection of over 300 classes on screenwriting, including......

The Celtx Seminars!!
Dates:
Thursday, Oct. 25/07, 9am
Friday, Oct. 26/07 - 11am
Saturday, Oct. 27/07 - 11am
PRE-REGISTER NOW!! (Like Celtx, It's FREE!!)

'New Approaches to Writing from Script to Screen
Integrating processes of writing and screenplay development with Celtx'.
Presented by Australian Filmmaker and Educator, Mike Jones.
For too long the writing of the screenplay has been divorced from the development of ideas into cinematic vision. Now in the digital age we are afforded enormous opportunities to embrace tools that allow for an holistic approach to developing a movie project from concept, character and script - through to pre-visualization, storyboarding and production. Celtx is just such a tool. Open source and free, Celtx brings together comprehensive screenwriting, character and plot development tools with storyboarding, break-down and production management systems. This presentation will demonstrate Celtx and explore the new approaches to building a screenplay made possible by its powerful feature set.

Mike's Bio:
Mike Jones has a diverse background as a media producer, writer and educator on film, video, digital media technologies and cinema theory. He is a syndicated columnist and author of three books on film, writing and production as well as former editor for the Australian National Playwrights Centre. He is manager of the Vectorlab digital media studios at Australia ’s largest museum, the Powerhouse and teaches cinema studies and digital production at the University of New South Wales and theInternational Film School, Sydney. His approach to screenwriting focuses on an integration with production processes and embracing the creative diversity of the digital age.

So like I said, PRE-REGISTER NOW for one of Mike's Celtx seminars, and feel free to bring your laptop, or just sit back, relax and learn, and enjoy the show.

The Tradeshow
Celtx Team members will be in attendance too, and we'd love to meet you face to face, so drop by our booth at the tradeshow, say 'Hello' and snag some swag.. (cause ya know we always have cool swag.)

To Register or for More Information see:
Highlights
General Registration
Hotel Information

We really, Really, REALLY hope to see you there!!!
CHEERS!

The C-Team!