Celtx -- Anyone aware of this program?

Posted by Gary Carson
Oct 13, 2012 at 01:54 AM

The weird thing about the “industry standards” Final Draft and Movie Magic is that they are both riddled with bugs. At least, the windows versions are (I get the impression from reading the mixed reviews that both apps were originally designed for the Mac and then ported—badly—over to Windows). I’ve tested both of them on Windows and both would crash suddenly for no apparent reason. They also had a lot of other bugs with their screen displays and their outlining and online collaboration features, etc. And these are the standards that everyone in the industry is supposed to use. It’s incredible. I tested them a couple years ago, however, so maybe they’ve improved, but I doubt it.

I tried Celtx a while ago. Can’t remember too much about it, but it appeared to be stable. I also got burned when Sophocles went bust. The developer and his website just vanished into thin air, leaving a lot of users twisting in the wind, unable to reinstall their software because it required online activation. Movie Outline is another option which is apparently still being developed. It’s stable and fairly easy to use. I guess your choice will depend on your situation. If you’re writing spec scripts, you might be able to submit PDFs of your screenplays, so I guess it doesn’t matter what software you use. There are also some Word macros floating around out there, but from what I’ve read, most of the studios have specific standards regarding submissions. Some of them absolutely require Final Draft, for instance. I’m not sure what the situation is with agents.

The screenwriting program business appears to be a niche market similar to that for outliners and PIMs. If you’re serious about trying to break into screenwriting (a closed market if I ever saw one), you should probably invest in one of the major apps, probably Final Draft.