The Celtx Blog

'Time of Death' by Jason Daniels gets POW'd!

 

Just another dead body.

---

Nicole Baker is dead. The doctor performing the autopsy records the details of her demise. Is he using more than a keen eye to make his notes?

Hmmm... Best to ask that question to the film's creator, Jason Daniels of Olathe, Kansas who is now a two-time winner of the Celtx POW! ... First for 'Needle' and this time for his very effective short horror film,'Time of Death'.

In this work Jason provides terrific attention to detail ... everything from the music, the sound of a waning heartbeat, camera angles, the calm of the main character's voice, to the makeup and medical research.... And when blended together, these elements contribute greatly to making 'Time of Death' a convincing film that leaves you wide-eyed and wanting more.

To help provide further insight into this talented filmmaker's busy world, and the creative process applied to 'Time of Death', Jason was kind enough to share the following...

"I want to start off by writing how completely floored I was when I was informed that 'Time of Death' had been selected as the Project of the Week. This is my second POW and having my project recognized as such from the incredible body of work posted to Celtx Project Central is truly an honor. Thank you.

'Time of Death' is just a short film that shows things aren’t always what they first appear to be. Finishing the film completes a lifelong dream of becoming a filmmaker for me. We had such an incredible time making it. Being my first film, I wanted to do something with a simple story and minimal camera work. Although the film comes in just under three minutes, I learned so much from the process of shooting and editing it. From the makeup to the music, 'Time of Death', gave me the opportunity to do a little of everything.

Celtx was a critical tool in the filmmaking process for me. It allowed me to organize my script and share it and the storyboards with the film's co-star Elizabeth Hamlett. Project Central allowed me to get feedback on the project and ultimately, share the film itself. I was first introduced to Celtx in 2007 and have used it ever since to script the many stories that I always have floating around in my head. The application is such an easy to use, straightforward way to write, one would be crazy not to use it. And the ability to solicit feedback via Project Central is the feature that makes this application a must-have. I truly appreciate the many advances that the application has made over the past couple of years and I plan to use it for many years to come.

At the risk of disappointing those who have watched and enjoyed the film, I have to tell them that I have no plans to expand on the story. 'Time of Death' was always intended as a short film. I do have plans to shoot two other slightly longer shorts; 'Needle' and 'Roadside', the scripts for which can also be found on Project Central. I am also working on the second draft of a feature length romantic comedy, 'Pinky Swear,' a horror feature, 'Becoming' and a television pilot, 'In Rod We Trust'. Yes, I am using Celtx for all of these projects. These films and scripts can soon be seen on Project Central as well as on my website at InKansasPictures.com"

'Missteps' / Filmblazer T3 Community Filmmaking Project gets the Celtx POW!

 

The Filmblazer Two-week Turnaround Tour (T3) is one awesome community filmmaking project lead by the young and intrepid Filmblazer team of Joshua Mills, Jamie Blackenship and Adam Saunders. With an early interest in filmmaking and a nack for making 30 minute comedies for his college buddies, Josh was inspired to create T3 after 4 years of participation in the Greensboro 48 Hour Film Project:

"The city producers mentioned this guy that traveled to several different cities and participated in 48HFPs in each city. I thought that was really cool but thought if I were to do it, I’d want to spend more time in each city and really experience the what the city has to offer. Thus, the Two-week Turnaround Tour was born..."

So, armed with whatever their RV (affectionately called the 'BattleWagon') can carry, the team plans to visit 14 US cites over 7 months. Along the way they will enlist the help of volunteer crews from each local filmmaking community and together they will will write, shoot, and screen a short film ... in just two-weeks!!! ... all with the goal to promote, develop, and demonstrate new ways of producing motion pictures.

A tall, exhausting order indeed, but clearly not impossible for this crowd. Having already cut their teeth and enjoyed success on productions in Greensboro, NC and Tampa, FL, the team is now headed to Shreveport, LA, the third city on the tour. Totally plugged into all the Internet's social networking trends, this tech saavy crowd makes it easy for their community to connect with each other by accessing online tools to share their tricks of the trade.

So far the results of their labour is impressive. So impressive we're giving the Celtx POW  to Missteps and its Greensboro crew! You can check out the vid below. Given their limited resources and time restraints, plus heading into each city virtually blindfolded, these guys did an amazing job of pulling together an interesting, funny and convincing short film. One of the tools the team uses to help them create and keep organized is Celtx and here's Josh's explanation of how they go about it:

"We use Celtx to collaborate with other people. We use it in the traditional way, by using it to write the script and schedule the production. However we also use it to allow other members in our community to submit locations, props, and even themselves as actors to us.  Then we update/publish to our Project Central page so people can see what is going on. This way we're able to easily keep track of all the resources we have and stay organized throughout the two weeks. Staying organized will be incredibly important given the nature of this trip and the limited amount of time we have to complete each project."

As they go, each city experience is documented through blog posts, behind the scenes videos and a weekly podcast each featuring their trials and tribulations about what worked and what mistakes are never to be made again! And at the end of two weeks, each Premiere screening is preceded by pre-show interviews with cast and crew, then streamed live over the Internet, culminating with the ever essential wrap party.

As Josh says, community participation is essential to the success of T3, so if you're a fun-lov'n, fly-by-the-seat-of-your pants kinda fimmaker, prop master, set dresser or jack-of-all-trades-er, and interested in contributing to a T3 project I know these guys would love to have you. Check out the T3 Tour Schedule for a City near you and contact Josh, Jamie or Adam to join in the fun. And if you're too busy, please show your support with a donation, or buy a ticket to T3 Premiere near you.

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

"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

Angela Garcia wins the Celtx Holiday POW!

Last week we held a quick Project of the Week contest specific to the holiday season and 'Christmas Angels Give Teddy Bears' by Angela Garcia of Alexandria, VA was declared the winner!

When asked what was the inspiration behind her story, here's what Angela had to say....

"Inspiration-
Although, this entry isn't really that original in terms of the hospital setting, I wanted to convey a belief or and idea that I have thinking about for some time now. That is, when people believe in the higher powers everything has and must go for a reason and if that is the case then certain people become pawns in the life of another. Such as, Melanie, she is a great spirit but her purpose comes to serve through providing Maggie with a second chance at life. And Maggie is the one life line that Adam must cling to preserve his strength in life. However, Adam's ultimate purpose in life isn't conveyed if he is a good or bad guy and if he will help others in his lifetime. I know this script didn't come out as brilliant as I hoped but I wanted to give it a go.

I used to write a lot in school but I never really pursued script writing until August when I stumbled upon Celtx (divine intervention? lol). The forums and PC really have become a second home in terms of support, guidance, and advice in screen writing. - Thanks!"

Thanks to you for participating Angela! Your Celtx holiday jacket and handy USB key will be enroute shortly!

Cheers!!!
Sheila and the C-Team

Wicks End Studios 'Lesser Angels' wins the Celtx POW!

'Lesser Angels' - Synopsis:
"America's economy has left many homeowners struggling to prevent foreclosures and bankruptcies. Johnny Angel, aspiring photographer and would be philanthropist, seeks justice through crime to resolve his impeding marital and financial problems. Will his desperate decision to maintain the "American Dream" lead him to glory?"

This week's POW is a short crime film that comes to us from the talented Independent crowd at San Diego's Wicks End Studios. 'Lesser Angels' was written, directed and produced by Chad Skolte, a prolific and long time Celtx user with a number of projects to his credit. In March 2007 he and his crew also won the POW for 'Mira Bella'.

Chad says,
"CeltX is instrumental in my writing process and allows me to guide the script from the page to pre-production effectively."

And this project reflects nicely the pre- post workflow involved with a short film production. The embedded trailer along with its very cool sound track and credits shows how all the hard work translates on screen.

Nice job, Guys!
All the best on the festival circuit.

Sheila and The C-Team.

 

Credits
Cast:

Johnny Angel - John Amaya

La Esposa - Elizabeth Perez

Bro - Anthony Aquilante

Young Hottie - Miriam Putnum

Radio V.O. Actor - Norman Ellis-Flint

Banker V.O. Actor - Jon Elliott

Bar Extras -
Michael Rossler
Matt Brown
Zubin Eggleston
Terrance Robinson
Chris Soolari

Crew:
Cinematographer.........Federico Aragon
Sound & Audio.........Mike Von der Kret
Assistant Camera.........Phillip Johnson
Editor.........Jon Grinberg
Jib Operator/Grip.........Alex Aguila
Makeup Artists.........Brittany Wiczek
Janet Potenza
Production Assistant.........Gale Jacquot
Music Composers.........Charles Davis
Mike Von der Kret
Soundtrack.........
Plural:
Scott Kennerly
John Meeks
Jeff Hawthorne
Jason Holford

The Chelsea Royal:
Rafe Pearmlan
Marc Herron
Matt Casebeer
Danny Young
Charles Davis

Special Thanks:
Tower Bar San Diego
Sole Luna Cafe
Mike Rauber
CeltX
Video Gear

"Des maîtres pour l'éternité" /"Masters for Eternity" takes the Celtx POW!

Creeping its way across the pond from France, this week's haunting POW entitled 'Des maîtres pour l'éternité' / Masters for Eternity', is a vampire tale that serves as a metaphor for the struggle of mutli-national power, and control of human resources. This 60-minute film planned for release in Autumn 2009 was co-written by Franck Jouneau and Guy Autret. Development of the music score and film shooting will begin next August in beautiful Nantes, France under the direction of Franck Jouneau. For a sneak peek you can view the trailer here.

Jouneau's project exhibits substantial preparation with many aspects of the film's pre-production planning. Of particular interest is the detail applied to casting of principal roles, set design, and makeup.

When asked how he discovered Celtx, Franck indicated,

"I found CeltX by chance on the web a few years ago. It’s really a great software, the tool I was waiting for to build the structure of my projects. The only lack, I think, is the link to production cost, but maybe one day I hope… "

In the meantime, Franck has another movie in the works based on his second novel “Dreams only exist when you look at them”. And according to the varied interests outlined in his brief bio below, I expect we'll be seeing and hearing much more from Monsieur Jouneau in the future.

We wish you all the best, Franck!
from
Sheila and The C-Team

FRANCK JOUNEAU

I was born in Nantes on the 29th of 1958. After few years studying graphic design and history of art, I Choose to go to Dublin to live my life as a musician. During 15 years I shared two passions, music and graphic arts.

Since always I tried to free myself from all constraints. This is undoubtedly the reason why I consider art, only as multidisciplinary. I hope thus to gain a broader, more universal vision; necessary, in my opinion to understand what surrounds us, what makes us live and in which way. My interest are specially in four fields of creation:

Graphic Arts
In different ways (I several times, made exhibitions of my work on paper or digital medium in galleries in France and Canada). I have been working in graphic industry since 1985 as art director and a multimedia designer in different fields such as the print publication, television, video, Web and teaching. For now nearly ten years, I have been participating in digital art exhibitions and make short movies, using 3D, and special effects compositing.

Music
Because I took part in many bands from 1979 to 1984 as drummer in Ireland, England and Holland, and in France up to 1994, playing Rock and Jazz, passing by, rhythm & Blues, fusion or improvisation. In 2000, I recorded some sessions in Montreal, some drumming tracks in Nantes in 2006. The last concert was an
improvised music on the projection of my movie “U Win Ur Life”.

Writings
I wrote a first science-fiction novel “Hector’s awakening”, that I finished after five years of gestation in 1994. In 2004, a sci-fi comic strip, entitled “Lia’s strange adventure”. And again a novel, always impregnated of fantastic, “Dreams only exist when you look at them” who treats Schizophrenia and invented worlds, finished in 2005. In December 2008, a new science fiction novel, “Hunger only, gives the will to improve”, dealing with politico economic problems.

Cinema
In 2003, I create a multimedia play, according to my novel “Hector’s awakening”, I then, adapted it into a film (still in preproduction). In 2008, I present my first short film, “U Win Ur Life”. This film treats of the use of misery, by people
of power.

To view more work by Franck Jouneau check out his websites:
Web Site : www.franckjouneau.net
MySpace : http://www.myspace.com/franckjouneau
DailyMotion : http://www.dailymotion.com/franckjouneau
YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/FranckJouneau

'Oh Josephine' gets POW'd!

Created by film student Norman Roscher for his thesis project at SAE Stuttgart, 'Oh Josephine' is a German short film shot in the style of a film noir crime thriller.

Based on the preview of images from the actual film shoot which took place in Dec/07-Jan/08, Norman did an effective job of integrating the classic visual traits of film noir like the dark, gloomy, wet nights, hovering shadows, back alleys, guns and violence, and the ever critical presence of the hero/ anti-hero (Matt) and femme fatale (Josephine). As well, one can clearly see the David Lynch and Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) influences that Norman mentions in his thesis' Statement of Intent.

Roscher has also incorporated a clever choice of music which reflects the film's title in excerpts of mixed versions from Shakin' Stevens' 1982: "Josephine" Album: Give me your Heart and Chris Rea's Josephine (1985) Album: Road to Hell (a fave of mine).

If you'd like to get a fairly accurate translation of the Synopsis and other project details, just copy/paste any of the project's text into Google Translate.

Overall, an enjoyable project, and a film I would love to see!

'Bite Club' Sucks up the Celtx POW!

It's been awhile since we've laughed this much reading a script... Written and created by Charles (Chucky) Kenway of Sydney, Australia, 'Bite Club' is an animated work about group therapy for monsters. Specifically, a motley crew of undead characters seeking guidance in overcoming addictions like, you know,... blood lust for example!

Chucky works primarily in story art and production illustration, but also enjoys project development and art direction. In this project, his astute imagination has conjured up some intentionally stereotypical characters with a few twists and quirks like Larry Gumstein, the 'The Fiend and geeky Vampire of high birth' who plays the role of the therapy group's secretary.

The script itself is an entertaining read injected with quick wit and clever play on words. Chucky said the inspiration for Bite Club "came from a joke a with a friend about these stereotypical movie monsters needing group therapy and I just wrote  through the scenario and the stories just grew from a logical extension of the joke so it only took a few hours to get it down, luckily."

A look at the project's storyboard quickly reveals Chucky's 16 years of professional experience as a storyboard artist. The Professional Summary in his resume reads:

With over sixteen years experience as a storyboard artist, illustrator animator and occasional director Charles has worked in many roles with various film, interactive and advertising companies. He has helped solve many creative issues involved with visualisation and storytelling, indeed his duties have often spread into the realms of script editing and writing, as well as various concept and design duties. He has a good understanding of traditional photographic techniques that often are misunderstood or unconsidered and has worked with both masters of visual mediums (like Dr. George Miller)and newcomers alike.  He  has also seen budgets for creative projects triple as a result of the burgeoning confidence arising from the reception of his storyboards, concept art and animatics.

To experience more of Charles Kenway's art and expertise, or maybe even inquire about hiring him for your next production ;)...  check out his web site here.

Thanks for the laughs, Chucky... Wonderful job!

Sheila and The C-Team

Vu Nguyen's 'Going Home' selected as Celtx Project of the Week

This week's POW is brought to you by aspiring filmmaker Vu Nguyen and his Bluelight Pictures crew in Sachse, Texas. This suspenseful short horror story entitled 'Going Home' is about Sam Bakers and an incident he encountered on his way home from work one night. As he sets out on a journey to get some answers, he finds he gets more than he bargained for.

Along with this captivating story, Vu's project also includes extensive breakdown of the script, and an impressive storyboard to help previsualize and plan the production. Also of interest is the crew catalog which provides profiles of the talented team doing all the hard work, plus the inclusion of a link to the 'Going Home' blog which diarizes the details of the film's production process.

Recently Vu was kind enough to take the time to tell us a bit more about himself, and what inspired the idea for creating 'Going Home'...

About myself: I am an aspiring filmmaker located in Dallas, Texas. As many others, I have a day job but it can't stop me from doing what I love the most! My motto is very simple, "Doing it is the only way of learning it."... so I've been trying to do all I can and learn it a long the way... I've been making short films on and off and Going.Home is gonna be my 4th short films. My goal is to get myself making films full time!

About Going.Home: The idea of going home inspired from various sources, including movies that I have seen, as well as old stories that I was told in my childhood. I started the project by just writting down ideas and slowly developed it into a story. Then many many re-reading sessions... I just kept on re-reading it and put it away for a while when I ran into an idea roadblock... then came back to it and re-read some more...

About Celtx: This is also a first project I use Celtx for. All projects before I mainly use an old version of Final Draft and while it's a great software for scripting... I found Celtx is much more in advance and helps me a lot in the preproduction process. I ran into Celtx as I was wandering in the hv20.com forums. Someone posted a link there and I thought let me give it a try and thank god that I did. Celtx by far is the best scripting and preproduction software for me ;-)
Thanks again. It's a real honor to be selected!

BlueLight Pictures is operated and maintained by a local group of filmmakers with a passion for the movie industry. All of its workers are committed in developing the best products as possible. If you would like to be part of the aspiring team behind BlueLight Pictures, feel free to contact them here.

All the best, Guys!

Sheila and The C-Team