Obtaining and Installing Celtx | Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting Beginner's Guide

Sign In Start Free Trial

Book Overview & Buying
Table Of Contents

Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting Beginner's Guide

4.6 (9)

Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting Beginner's Guide

4.6 (9)

Overview of this book

Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting Beginner's guide

Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting Beginner's guide

Credits

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

About the Reviewers

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Preface

Free Chapter

Obtaining and Installing Celtx

Obtaining and Installing Celtx

System requirements

Choosing and downloading the right version of Celtx

Time for action - finding the download choices

Time for action - downloading Celtx

Installing Celtx

Time for action - installing Celtx on a PC

Time for action - installing Celtx on Mac OS X

Time for action - Linux installation

Time for action - installing on a Netbook

Testing Celtx

Time for action - starting it up

Time for action - establishing an Internet connection

Time for action - getting and adding dictionaries

Celtx's six biggies—its types of projects

Summary

All those Wonderful Writing Features

All those Wonderful Writing Features

Writing with character and mastering the Master Catalog

Time for action - saving a project

Time for action - adding manual catalogs

Need an assistant?

Time for action - intuitive formatting

Time for action - numbering scenes

Time for action - using the Scratchpad

Time for action - adding embedded notes to a script

Write once, use many

Time for action - getting the script out of your computer

Using Index Cards

Revision Mode

Time for action - adding new project types with the Template Engine

Summary

Visualizing Productions Ahead of Time

Visualizing Productions Ahead of Time

Sketching

Time for action - starting a new sketch

Time for action - saving and organizing Sketches

Storyboarding

Time for action - storyboarding

Time for action - moving a Sketch to a Storyboard

Time for action - adding media files

Summary

Tools for Getting Organized

Tools for Getting Organized

Project Library

Time for action - adding Items

Time for action - adding a folder

Time for action - deleting items

Scheduling, call sheets, and shooting reports

Time for action - scheduling

Time for action - customizing schedule options

Time for action - call sheets, shooting schedules, and other reports

Inter-project document management

Toolbox

Summary

Tooling Up for Scriptwriting

Tooling Up for Scriptwriting

The File menu

Time for action - starting a new project

Time for action - opening an existing project

Time for action - opening and saving recent projects

Time for action - saving early and often

Time for action - saving a project under another name

Time for action - creating new project types

Time for action - closing a project

Time for action - closing tabs and windows

Time for action - opening and saving a project stored on Celtx studio

Time for action - add Item, add Folder, delete Item

Time for action - setting up a page

Time for action - previewing and printing a local print job

Time for action - showing the project file

Time for action - exiting

The Edit menu

Time for action - undoing a change

Time for action - redoing (restoring) a change

Time for action - cutting

Time for action - copying

Time for action - pasting

Time for action - selecting it all

Time for action - finding that which was lost

The View menu

The Script menu

Time for action - exporting scripts

Time for action - adapting to another type of script

Time for action - revising a completed script (and you will)

Time for action - updating the Master Catalog

Time for action - using formatting options

Time for action - hiding the Sidebar

The Tools menu

With a little help from our friends

The top buttons

The Project Library window

The Scenes window

The editor toolbar

The bottom buttons

Customizing the Celtx screen

Additional buttons

Summary

Advanced Celtx

Advanced Celtx

Multiple projects in a single project container

Time for action - working with multiple project containers

Importing Scripts in detail

Time for action - importing the Celtx way

Time for action - importing my way

Time for action - accurately importing scripts

Time for action - exporting Scripts in detail

Summary

Writing Movies with Celtx

Writing Movies with Celtx

Preparing to write a Screenplay

Time for action - setting up the project

Time for action - creating a title page

Scenes

Time for action - formatting scene heading

Action

Character

Dialog

Parenthetical

Shot

Transition

Text

Printing it out

Summary

Documentaries and Other Audio-Visual Projects

Documentaries and Other Audio-Visual Projects

What is an audio-visual production?

Starting an AV project in Celtx

Time for action - beginning our new AV project

Time for action - setting up the container

Time for action - adding a title page

Writing an AV project in Celtx

Summary

Raising the Curtain on Plays

Raising the Curtain on Plays

Act 1, Scene 1—writing a play

Time for action - starting a theatre project

Time for action - creating the title page

Play elements

Printing our play

Tracking the cast

Summary

Audio Plays, Podcasts, and Other Great Sounds

Audio Plays, Podcasts, and Other Great Sounds

Listen to this

Time for action - setting up our audio play project

Audio play elements

Time for action - numbering elements and creating a PDF

Time for action - using BBC formatting

Summary

WAP! POW! BANG! Writing Comic Books with a Punch

WAP! POW! BANG! Writing Comic Books with a Punch

Graphic storytelling

Time for action - opening the sample comic book script

Time for action - creating a Celtx comic book container

Time for action - building the title page

Comic book elements

Navigating, deleting, and reordering pages

Summary

Marketing Your Scripts

Marketing Your Scripts

Appearances are everything!

Loglines and queries

Ways to get noticed

Places to get leads

Getting support from your fellow writers

Time for action - marketing using Celtx files

Be persistently persistent

Summary

Conclusion

List of Recommended Books on Screenwriting and Productions and Online Resources

List of Recommended Books on Screenwriting and Productions and Online Resources

Screenwriting

Production

Online resources

Celtx's New Web Look and Smartphone Apps

Celtx's New Web Look and Smartphone Apps

Celtx on Smartphones!

Future Development of Celtx

Future Development of Celtx

Celtx 3.0

Thank you!

Pop quiz—Answers

Pop quiz—Answers

Chapter 5: Tooling Up for Scriptwriting

Chapter 6: Advanced Celtx

Chapter 8: Documentaries and Other Audio-Visual Projects

Chapter 9: Raising the Curtain on Plays

Chapter 10: Audio Plays, Podcasts, and Other Great Sounds

Chapter 11: WAP! POW! BANG! Writing Comic Books with a Punch

Time for action - starting it up

Launching Celtx in any of the four operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, and eeePC) is simply a matter of double-clicking on the movie clapper icon, which is shown in the following screenshot:

We Linux guys may need to create a launcher icon in GNOME or KDE to get the movie clapper. In my case, I have Celtx on two Ubuntu servers, a Windows XP laptop, a Vista machine, and two more XP machines. It works flawlessly on all of them.

Creating a launcher, by the way, varies depending on your flavor of Linux. For example, in Ubuntu, left click on the desktop, click on Create Launcher, and follow the directions.

What just happened?

Okay, we've double-clicked on the movie clapper and next we see a splash screen. it's the same on all systems and looks similar to the following screenshot:

On the left, we have the major types of projects Celtx excels at, which are as follows:

Film
Audio-Visual
Theatre (stage plays)
Audio Play (everything from radio plays to podcast scripts)
Storyboard (so you can visually plan projects)
Comic Book (where we can write graphic novels and other good stuff)

On the right are your current projects. In this case, Portals is one of my scripts in progress, which we'll be using as an example. There are two copies of it because it's on two machines as a backup.

The remainder of material at the bottom of the splash page consists of links to the Celtx Studio service and the other things they sell to support Celtx, all optional. This latter information is loaded from the Internet. If it's not visible, you'll need to activate your Internet connection. To get the full power of Celtx, it must have Internet access.

Let's do just a little more installation work before we go wild and have some fun exploring Celtx. Here's why.

CONTINUE READING

83

Tech Concepts

36

Programming languages

73

Tech Tools

Unlimited access to the largest independent learning library in tech of over 8,000 expert-authored tech books and videos.

Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.

50+ new titles added per month and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.

Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting Beginner's Guide

Search

Your notes and bookmarks