If you’re gonna make a fan film, you need a script (no, seriously). If you’re really ambitious, you might even want to storyboard your movie, like the guys from Troops did. Once you get into production, you’ll want to keep track of who’s gonna be where on what day so you can shoot, edit, set up elaborate pranks, etc. Well, put all that together and it’s a lot to keep track of, so you might want to check out Celtx software for Mac, Windows and Linux.
Celtx v1.0 is a free, integrated solution that combines all pre-production activities and tools in one software suite, including writing, story development, production breakdown, scheduling and reporting. It’s available in 20 different languages (you know, the kind you speak), they have some fairly busy forums, and there’s a Celtx blog to keep users up-to-date on the software’s progress.
According to the company, it can be used to “create, organize and publish film, video, audio, theater, comic books and other media. It also contains an Internet friendly tool that enables collaboration online for script writing, story development and scheduling during the pre-production process helping media creators manage the process despite their location.” Heck, you can even use it on your iPhone apparently (now, if I only had one….).
In beta for a while, the software just went street-legal with Version 1.0, so it reportedly already has 250,000 active users in 160 countries and 1 million downloads since its launch in 2004. Considering that my favorite screenwriting program, Final Draft, costs a mint—and it doesn’t do all the rest of that production whatnot—the concept of “free without having to use pirated software” should be pretty enticing for any filmmaker on a budget.
