We’ve been increasingly dabbling in product and technology reviews because the pace of innovation in media is accelerating to such a degree, that it’s fair to say that not even Product Hunt can keep up with all that matters to the work that you do (this one wasn’t there! it is now).
As a could be author, I’m frequently poking around publishing tech such as Scribe Media, Kitaboo, and Blurb’s Bookwright, I have enough content on blogs to fill a library. But it’s through our work in MediaTech Ventures that we keep getting asked about innovations that bridge forms of media and cross the chasm, so to speak, from one format to another.
- Radio & Podcast
- Music in Film
- News in Social Media
Books on Film
All-in-one online solution for writing, planning, and managing media production is the first of its kind and has enjoyed enormous global adoption.
My daughter discovered this, and I mention that in particular because it’s astounding what our schools are teaching our next generations about media. A high school student, she’s in a media production class and has put together some incredible work at as young as 15. As a young author, she figured out how to self publish and now, with the encouragement of her teacher, is exploring what’s involved in turning one of her books into an independent film.
Celtx provides online software for scripting and producing creative film, video, audio, and other media projects. User can post their work on a project page, which can be opened to the public or password-protected for a team of collaborators who can then make changes, revisions, and edits, at the discretion of the original author.
A funny aside (just because I have that personality that is amused by coincidences). This week is St. Patrick’s Day, so my Celtic history is on my mind. And I find myself in Austin, TX.
Yeah it’s an observation that will probably just make you roll your eyes but when my daughter yelled, “hey dad, check this out,” and I saw Cel-TX, I got fixated on sharing with you our experience.
Yeah, I’m a bit dorky like that.
Based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, in Canada, what caught our attention was not just being script writing software but the fact that she uploaded her 300+ page book and out from Celtx (with a minor amount of training), came a script:
- Locations and chapters organized as scenes
- Actions leading characters
- Characters organized and managed in a database
- Dialogue associated with characters in the scene
Storyboards, scripts, index cards, budgeting and a catalog of resources, Celtix organized those characters so that actors could be cast, budgeted, and managed, while shots are organized and scheduled for call sheets to go out.
We’ve seen here, in MediaTech Ventures, tremendous demand for education about and insight into funding films. The industry has changed in the near blink of an eye as we’ve experienced the disruption of cable television, the quarantine’s hit on theaters, the role streaming will play in our future, and the next boom of independent screenwriters, film makers, and talent. So this was a more than welcome discovery; knowing how much education in this space is needed, Celtx promotes first in the website navigation the work that they’re doing with schools (and I plan to explore with them how we can get them involved here).
Hey Gamers
Books to script were an exciting discovery but it was noting that another prominent feature of their nav stood out: Games & VR.
There’s a new project type available in your Celtx Studio that offers you an entirely new way to write. It’s called Game & VR, and it provides you with a sophisticated set of tools that will take your creativity to new heights.
Craft a story where choices and conditions influence how it plays out…
“Collaboration is what really interests people,” Celtx cofounder and CEO Mark Kennedy told LinuxInsider. “Filmmaking involves lots of people with different skill sets that join together to create material for a project. We knew that if we could get that information in a digital format, people would be able to share that among themselves more easily. We saw what happened in music with new distribution platforms, and we realized the same thing would happen with film and video.”
Ted Cohen has a series of great reviews with us, to share a few…
DeSo is a new layer-1 blockchain built from the ground up to scale decentralized social applications to one billion users – more at deso.org
We used Celtx for “Hyde”. However, we used “WriterDuet” to write the script. Celtx is a good tool, and hopefully has fixed a great many of the issues we ran into when using it. We also used it as recently as this summer when shooting a documentary-series pilot and still found the budget portion of it very lacking and somewhat of a pain.
“WriterDuet” as far as scriptwriting is concerned is a far superior program…at least for writing. Granted, it doesn’t fall into a “one-stop-shop” software, BUT…the collaboration features on it and what you can do in there as a writer is FAR more impressive. That said, I have written 7 scripts in WriterDuet and when we used Celtx, just imported the PDF of the completed screenplay and it loaded just fine.
All of that said, I think it’s a great thing on the educational side of what they’re doing and it has a more user-friendly, and for indie filmmakers. As we make the jump from indie to more commercial level films (commercial meaning bigger budget and theatrical), Celtx, and many of the other similar programs out there, i.e. Yamdu and StudioBinder, lean more toward the DIY filmmaker. But all highly useful in what they offer.
Great perspective, thanks @dallas-burgess
Great spot (and such an obvious use for tech in hindsight). I’ll check this out
Cheers Grant Heinrich. Made it all the more exciting to be able to walk through it my kids.
Thanks for the love, Paul.
We’ve been making some big improvements to our Import tool and our Game & VR toolset in the past year – so glad that you and your daughter are finding it useful!
Yeah I need to dig in more on what you’re doing with that side of the platform. A lot of game and VR producers in our world
Holy AI Batman! This is awesome…. (not to mention your daughter’s project.. and only 15! Congrats!!
Jerry F. Price thanks my friend! Yeah I’m proud, she’s working on her second book… all under a pen name. Now the Vandegrift High School media program has her excited about film.
Wow. This is amazing (both the facts your daughter wrote a 300+ page book and what Celtx does).
Cheers Jason Eisenberg! And good to see you here, it’s been too long!! Coffee soon?