For over twenty years, Celtx has been changing the way people think about creating content. Our all-in-one online solution for writing, planning, and managing media production is the first of its kind, and has enjoyed enormous global adoption; over 6 million people around the world use Celtx to create their film and television masterpieces, marketing content, short form videos, and video games.
This number is pretty impressive, but the hallmark of a truly successful product is when the people involved in creating the product use it, and enjoy it! That’s right – not only does the Celtx Team help creators do what they do best, but we also like to write, plan, and shoot our own moving pictures from time to time.
Our Product Manager, Andrew Winter, approached a member of our Customer Success Team, Nancy Hynes and her partner Ian Foster, with an idea in early 2020. Nancy and Ian are both talented musicians, and Andrew wanted to create an animated music video for Voyager, a song Ian wrote about the Voyager Space Probe.
Andrew, aside from being a Celtx product expert, is also a talented filmmaker and animator. With help from Celtx’s Graphic Designer Mira Howards, they worked together to execute Nancy and Ian’s creative vision.
A few months later, they released this beautiful music video into the world.
Creating a music video might seem like it’s all fun and games, but like any animated short form video it requires a lot of collaborative effort and talent – and it all starts in the script.
The Voyager Team used the Celtx Multi-Column AV format to develop the script and visuals for this music video in tandem. The MCAV format allowed the team to split up the lyrics of the song in the audio column, and then visually describe each individual shot in the video column.
They then timed out the lyrics to the video, gave each shot a duration, and used these mapped-out shots to compare to the final running time of the audio file. This process sounds tedious, but the MCAV format saved this team many hours of work!
When we asked the Voyager Team which Celtx feature they found most useful, Ian was quick to tell us about how the Storyboard helped to develop the overall story:
“We used the Storyboard function in Celtx to quickly visualize what was happening on screen as the song played. I used sample images to drop into each Storyboard card based on the proposed story beats. Andrew then added in drawings he created to illustrate more specific intended angles and movement for Mira, but many were left as is from stock photos found online and uploaded through the Media feature.
Mocking up the video using the Storyboard feature was very quick and easy, and presented in a simple yet attractive interface; we could more readily spot shots that might end up a bit too long, or gaps in the storyline itself as the video played out.”
Ian Foster.
Writer and Creator of Voyager
The Voyager music video has since been nominated for a Canadian Independent Music Video Award (CIMVA), and Ian was even contacted by an engineer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory about their love of the song and video. Celtx couldn’t be prouder to have a part in it!
If you’d like to chat about how Celtx can help you and your team create great content and help you get to camera faster – please get in touch! You can head to www.celtx.com to sign up, and get started with all tools free for your first 7 days.