The Celtx Blog

Celtx Project of the Week goes to... 'The Angry Trumpeter'

'The Angry Trumpeter' is... 'An animated comedy series chronicling the daily happenings of a completely worthless newspaper, its equally worthless staff, and the nonevents they cover.'

Co-created over the internets by Alex Richardson of Little Rock, Arkansas and Andrew West of La Porte, Indiana, this episodic work-in-progress incorporates a fun and entertaining writing style and great character development, accompanied with animated sketches that further bring these characters to life.

This young and talented duo met a few years ago through various online forums and have been friends and collaborators ever since. Alex is a student at Central High School, and actually works on the school newspaper, while Andrew is a recording musician and photographer, who operates an experimental music blog at escapology.org, where Alex also happens to be a contributor. Read on as the guys share details of their collaborative and creative process and what factors continue to inspire the making of 'The Angry Trumpeter'...

Alex Richardson:

"...Andrew showed me Celtx a while back, and I fooled around with it a bit. We used it mostly because of the ability to collaborate on a project, and the script was kind of secondary. I do a lot of the writing. We toss around ideas, and then generally switch off, scene to scene.... I'm in newspaper at my school, and I think we decided to integrate ourselves into it at some point with Andrew's guy being the photographer, and my guy as the writer, then he suggested a bunch of characters. ...Then, suddenly, they were actual people, and Chuck had a girlfriend and Donny was Donny and Meg was there, and Hank and Louis and Jerry and Doog. It was really exciting.

Andrew has a lot of the funnier ideas that I end up implementing (more than him, at least). He also does the character sketches and, originally, stock-photo-finding, back before we had the good idea of treating it as a cartoon--and this is advantageous for a lot of reasons, mostly because it lets us go hog-wild with settings and characters and plots. Andrew's been really helpful to the project, between ideas and the character sketches and the editing. He's come up with some great stuff, and he's been really encouraging."

Andrew West:

"The episodes are written starting with some throwing around of ideas over AIM. Once we have the makings of a plot, Alex lays it out into a timeline and we take turns writing scenes, usually consulting each other over AIM in the process.  Believe me though, it sounds far more organized than it really is. 

We've taken a lot of inspiration from a short lived cartoon called Mission Hill. Venture Bros, Seinfeld, and the whole gamut of British comedy has been a big influence as well.

None of the scripts are quite ready yet for filming (or animating, as the case may be), but the grand scheme is to collaborate with desperate//interested animation students to get the show into a watchable form, record the voice overs in my home studio, and present it in a traditional episodic format through a Tumblr-hosted website I'll probably design and code myself.

In short, our goal is to write, animate, and broadcast an animated series for next to nothing. I've used both Movie Magic and Final Draft. In my humble opinion, Celtx is not only on a level playing field, but it has the potential to completely blow away the overpriced (relative to free, everything is overpriced) competition. I really think Celtx is an incredible thing. Not only fantastic software, but the whole community behind it. Project Central, the forums (where the staff are even active contributors)... it all goes to show that not everything, maybe most things, but not everything has a catch. "

Thanks for the good vibes, Guys. We'll wait with great anticipation for future episodes of.... 'The Angry Trumpeter'!!

All the best,

Sheila and The C-Team

Celtx Against Malaria Students Challenge - 'Special Recognition' goes to....

Celtx, in partnership with the Against Malaria Foundation is delighted to announce and give Special Recognition to the top 3 media creators who submitted entries to the Celtx Against Malaria Students Challenge.

The quality of entries from around the world was impressive, and we’d like to thank everyone who took the time to submit their work in an effort to inspire others to donate and help raise awareness on the impact bed nets have in the fight against malaria. To date, the collective effort of individual donors and Challenge participants has helped Celtx /Against Malaria raise $1,482.11 (US), 100% of which has helped protect over 1.5 million people with long lasting insecticidal mosquito nets!!!

So without further delay, the creators of the following three projects receive special recognition for effectively delivering the CAM message in a creative, simple and clear manner:

  1. 'John and Mary' by Steve Macfarlane, Brooklyn, NY, USA
  2. 'Against Malaria' by Chris Clute, North Hollywood, CA, USA
  3. 'Give us Hope' by Angela Garcia, Alexandria, VA, USA

Steve, Chris and Angela will each receive the honor of determining the countries of distribution for 5,000 malaria bednets. Celtx swag packs are also on their way to everyone who submitted a project for the challenge.

The Celtx Team extends very special thanks to Rob Mather and his exceptional team at Against Malaria Foundation for being a terrific partner in this initiative, and to filmmaker /photographer, Zack Wilson and his creative crew for use of resource images and for their heartfelt enthusiasm and generosity in the making of the CAMSC promotional video. It's been a great pleasure working with all of you.

Celtx /Against Malaria will run this Challenge again in the Fall/09 so that should give you plenty of time to pull a team together and brainstorm a winning entry!  In the meantime we continue to accept donations over at the  [url=http://www.againstmalaria.com/Celtx.aspx]Celtx Against Malaria website[/url].... so please, ... keep spreading the word.

Thanks Everybody.

Sheila and the C-Team

"AS DE TRÉBOL, AS DE CORAZONES'"/ "ACE OF CLUBS, ACE OF HEARTS " gets POW'd!

Happy New Year, Everybody!

Kicking off the Celtx Project of the Week for 2009 is an entertaining short action film by Juan Pennisi of Barcelona-based Stone Brokers Productions. "AS DE TRÉBOL, AS DE CORAZONES'"/ "ACE OF CLUBS, ACE OF HEARTS" is a great achievement for Juan and his small crew, especially when you consider it was made on a budget of less than 300€ (including the € 199 Canon MD101 they shot it with), and that none of the actors had ever acted before!

Made entirely with Celtx, a view of the project's Master Catalog shows how Juan put the application through it's paces, from writing the script, breaking it down, storyboarding each scene, and carefully planning the lighting, camera shots, special effects and other details to ensure the film evokes his own unique cinematic style. Read on as Juan explains in detail how the making of the film came about...

"I am 29 years old and started learning about cinematography only 4 years ago, when I moved to Barcelona to do so. “Ace of Clubs” is my second short film because shortly after moving here I was hired at a huge production company as one of its director’s personal assistant, where I basically learned all I know. A year ago I dropped everything because I needed to experiment myself, and because I wanted to dedicate myself to fictional story telling, movie making, not commercials. I began preparing a huge short with a calculated budget of over 70.000€ Euros but was only able to gather 15.000€ and the project froze... In my despair I shot “Ace of Clubs” instead, mainly to prove money was not an issue. So no money, no team, the cheapest camera I could find... And the short was created.

Since we had no budget, to get started we first did an inventory of all we had; locations, props, wardrobe, and out of that came inspiration for our ideas. My actors had never done anything before so I wrote the kind of movie I thought they’d like to be in. Guns and action, but even that’s not necessarily my kind of movie.

As for my roles in the project,... Basically I was everything except for actor, even though I did use my arms and hands as stand-ins for some shots haha... I wrote it together with two of the actors, and was the only member of the technical team except for my girlfriend, who helped me out editing the color and designing the promo stuff. I lit, directed, located, everything... It had a lot of pro’s... The larger the team the larger the probability for disaster... At least here in Spain hehe...

Currently I am writing my first feature film script. In the mean time my intention is to continue shooting shorts, trying to create some noise in festivals, and eventually try to produce my first feature film. Right now we’re writing, with Celtx, of course, a short about mountain climbers. Will be up on Celtx very soon ;) (well... A couple of months I guess).

Juan said he had Celtx on his Mac for a looong time... "And right when I was writing “Ace of Clubs” (in Final Draft) I opened Celtx and somehow mysteriously immediately connected with it. Haven’t dropped it since!"

So it just goes to show, Folks... You don't need no Hollywood budget to get the job done... Just a few inspired and resourceful bodies that aren't afraid to get their hands dirty, a camera, and some good old imagination (powered by Celtx ;)... et Voila!

All the best to you Juan, and to Emi, Diego and Gas. You should all be very proud.

Cheers!.. and good luck with that feature.

Sheila and The C-Team

Celtx Against Malaria Students Challenge- Submission Deadline Now Closed

Howdy Folks!

The entry deadline from the Celtx Against Malaria Students Challenge is officially closed (as of Dec.31, 2008 12:00 midnight PST). We're really pleased with the level of creativity and quality of the projects submitted from around the world, and sincerely thank all entrants for their effort and participation. Be sure to check out the entries here.

Over the next 2 weeks representatives from Against Malaria will review and select 3 of these projects whose creators will receive the honor of determining the countries of distribution for 5,000 malaria bednets. The winners will be announced on January 15, and the creators of all submissions will receive a Celtx swag pack (jacket and USB stick).

We would also like to extend many, many thanks to those of you who donated cash to the cause. To date, the Celtx Community has raised $ 1,444.29 (US) which has helped protect over 1.5 million people with long lasting insecticidal mosquito nets!!!

It's important to note that while this media challenge has come to an end for this year, the wrath of malaria unfortunately, has not. We strongly encourage everyone to continue in your efforts to help spread the word and inspire others to make a donation on the Celtx Against Malaria website.

Good Luck to the CAMSC participants!

and

Happy New Year to All!

Sheila and the C-Team