Worship Leader Blog

Every now and then I decide to write a little script for something--it might be a short video, or a little stage play, or an audio drama or something else. I never know exactly how to format it, and I probably do it differently every time. And somewhere along the way I get bogged down in formatting the thing and the writing process is derailed, and I give it up and go do something else.

Well, there's a good chance that's not going to happen any more, because I recently stumbled upon an application called Celtx, which its developers tout as "the world's first all-in-one media pre-production software." And it really is a cool application. And here's the kicker--it's available for Windows, MacOS and Linux, and it's FREE.

With Celtx, you can create screenplays, stage plays, A/V scripts, audio plays, comic book scripts or plain text documents. The script editors produce output that conforms to the industry standards for each type of script. And there's more: you can also create storyboards with images that you upload, and incorporate sound, video and images to create "rich media breakdowns" of your project. There is a scheduling feature that allows you to create a detailed shooting schedule for a project, and you can take one type of script project and adapt it to another, such as turning a screenplay script into a stage play script. Celtx handles all of the formatting changes.

Celtx script windowI haven't really even begun to put this application through its paces, but there are some nice screencast tutorials on the Celtx site that explain features and demonstrate how to use the program. You can also get a Celtx Web server account, and publish your projects to be shared with other members of your team, or with the general public.

So far, I'm pretty impressed with Celtx, and I'm going to be giving it a workout. If you've got multiple screenwriters or A/V producers or drama script writers on your team, it makes sense to have everyone formatting their work in industry-standard ways. I heartily recommend that you give Celtx a try.