Celtx
- Thread starter droowl
- Start date
Free, pretty full featured. I am finally considering getting a pro product like Final Draft though.
It's a great scriptwriting software, especially considering it's free.
However, I tried the trial version of Final Draft and my goodness, it really is a ton better than Celtx.
I know, paid vs free, but If you ever do get the money then I truly do recommend you invest in Final Draft.
Then again, Celtx is brilliant for any film maker who has no money ( all of us
)
However, I tried the trial version of Final Draft and my goodness, it really is a ton better than Celtx.
I know, paid vs free, but If you ever do get the money then I truly do recommend you invest in Final Draft.
Then again, Celtx is brilliant for any film maker who has no money ( all of us
)
I'd never heard of this! I was looking for something similar, for free, about two years ago. Nobody ever mentioned this. Everything I ever tried was a load of crap! Just downloaded it, it's quite exciting! I've written about ten feature length screenplays, all formatted manually in Word! I'm gonna have to rewrite them all now, but that's cool, there's no harm in having another revision of a script!
It helps increase your workflow speed, in a big way!
It's the very small things that make a difference, take transitions as an example, in Celtx you select the transition tab and type in "FADE IN" or whatever. In Final Draft, there are two ways, keep pressing tab (or the transition tab) till your at the right side of the script and type the first letter of the transition and the list of the industry standard transitions come up with ease.
Another thing, making a character's dialogue a voice over. Correct me if I'm wrong here though, but with Celtx you basically have to type it in next to the characters name. With Final Draft, add a bracket "(" and the list of smart types include voice overs, subtitles. You can even add your own to the list.
The fact that in Final Draft, I can assign different voice to my characters and have the computer read it to me in the different voices gives me an idea of how it might sound or flow.
It's the customizability and also the fact it removes the boundary on spending time on useless time wasting techniques when you can spend time on what's really important, the story.
The revision mode is a life saver especially if someone else is inputting their own ideas.
With Celtx you have Celtx Studio if you'd like to collaborate with another write but it's $4.99 a month, the same feature is included in Final Draft for free (considering you have to pay for the software)
Just use it for one day and you'll understand how far behind Celtx is. I've been an avid Celtx user for about 1.5 years, though I was converted to Final Draft the first day I used it and scornfully look at Celtx every chance i get.
Seriously, there are much more features. The ones i listed were the small ones but were big enough for me.
But in saying that, I'd recommend Celtx to any body starting out rather than using 'Word'. It's very much like comparing Sony Vegas to FCP or Avid Media Composer.
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With Celtx, you can export script as a text file, then open in a text editor and save as an RTF file .. I just did that w/ a script and it looked fine, opened right up in Open Office as an RTF file
I agree. I think most "serious" screenwriters (guys who do it for a living or aspire to) still cough up the bucks. When you pound away on scripts MANY hours a week, week after week, small features can be a big deal.
There's an import feature
It does OK, but you may have to spend some time assigning block types to the blocks -- I just had to do this from a raw text file, didn't take too long and it's like knitting, I did it while watching a movie, brainless 
