Since 2005, Celtx has been the scrappy underdog in the screenwriting software war. Heavyweights Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter dominate in the professional realm, but Celtx's free price point and wealth of pre-production features have made it an appealing choice for independent producers and screenwriting dabblers.
With version 2.0 hitting the streets this month, Celtx is once again trying hard to appeal to the pros. Its collaboration features, now called "Celtx Studios", are certainly impressive, and its pre-production breakdown capabilities remain as robust as ever. But a dose of annoyances and some glaring omissions still prevent it from becoming a serious contender for professional screenwriters.
Collaboration With Celtx Studios
Aside from bug fixes and other invisible enhancements, the only new feature in version 2.0 is "Celtx Studios", essentially a vastly improved version of the existing "Project Central".
The slick interface of "Studios" allows the writer to share a project with collaborators, saving every revised version of the script along the way. Web-viewable versions can be created, and modified versions shown side-by-side in separate panes for comparison. It's essentially automated project management and archiving, and it works. Clearly this is where the Celtx team's effort has gone since the last version.
The down side, however, is that collaboration comes at a cost. Once the free beta period expires at the end of March, a subscription to Celtx Studios will cost $50 per year. And each member of the project team must subscribe separately. While the sudden shift to a pay model is initially off-putting, it does break down to barely $4 per month, certainly an affordable and usable project management option for low-budget independents.
Missing Features That Pros Need
Celtx's typing interface does have its share of annoyances. It's difficult to add a parenthetical in the middle of a block of dialogue, for example. And hitting enter to split one line of dialogue into two converts the rest of the dialogue into a character name which must then be manually re-formatted and its record removed from the Master Library. But both Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter have their own unique quirks, so it's hard to single Celtx out in this regard.
The professional screenwriter, however, will find one critical feature still absent: revision tracking. "Celtx Studios" will save every modified version of a script, but it will not visually indicate what was modified in that version. There's no way to add revision marks, traditionally asterisks on the right margin next to revised paragraphs. You can compare two scripts side-by-side, but you're going to have to scroll through both and manually spot the changes.
There is also no way to create colored revision pages (blue pages for first revision, pink for second revision, etc.) or lock page numbers, essential features in a professional workflow. Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter handle both of these needs with aplomb. The Celtx team have bafflingly stated that they "aren't convinced that scene locking is the right solution to the problem of scripts changing after publication", so don't look for this feature anytime soon.
A Pre-Production Tool
As a pre-production tool for budget-minded independents, Celtx holds up very well. It doesn't create professionally formatted reports like call sheets and day-out-of-days, but it is flexible and fairly intuitive. This is the aim of the Celtx team--a pre-production tool rather than just another screenwriting program.
Beginning screenwriters who want to test the waters without the heavy investment in Final Draft or Movie Magic will also be more than happy with Celtx. Its basic writing features remain usable and absolutely free. Professional screenwriters working in production pipelines, however, are still unlikely to be swayed away from the "big two".
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