Tools
A repository of all the tools, utilities, plug-ins, add-ons, applications and resources you’ll ever need. Free, Accessible and very bloody Useful.
Creative Creating
Celtx is the creative development tool of the digital age. 100% Open Source and Free to download and use. It combines screenplay formatting with script break-down tools, research and production scheduling functions. Forget that its Free, Celtx is the best tool of its kind on the market - integrated, comprehensive, holistic and very very functional. There just isnt a reason on the planet to Not be using Celtx. (Win, Mac) www.celtx.com
Episodic Series Develop Bible. This Celtx project file is a template guide to the elements and categories of a development bible for episodic Broadcast or WebTV. It outlines all the major components of a series bible and with individual annotations and breakdown. As a standard Celtx project you need only open the project in Celtx use its sections and breakdown to guide your series development writing process. Download the *.celtx file here (right+click, ‘download linked file as’ or ‘save file as’. If your computer incorrectly renames the file to an .XML then simply rename the suffix back .celtx)
Google Sketchup is a 3D modeling software tool that is perfect for building pre-visualizations for film projects. It allows you to easily and quickly layout 3D environments and spaces and plan camera movements and framings. Sketchup also draws upon the huge Google 3D model library saving you the need to build models from scratch. 100% free and cross-platform. Storyboarding is so last century. sketchup.google.com
Moviestorm presents a complete real-time animation system designed primarily for Machinima but, by proxy, highly effective as a Pre-Vis system for live-action. Moviestorm adheres to a strict movie production paradigm of Sets, Casting, Scenes and Camera and this will appeal to many directors wanting to use Moviestorm for pre-vis. Free and fully functional as well as cross-platform Mac and Windows. www.moviestorm.co.uk
FPSCreator is a game design tool dedicated to First-Person Shooter games. It can also work very well as a dynamic and proactive pre-visualization system. There is a free version that whilst it doesn’t allow for final compilation of a playable game does allow you to build complete 3D environments and navigate them with a virtual player/character. Good for brainstorming blocking, shooting and staging possibilities in real-time with a production team. fpscreator.com
Audacity is an excellent open source, cross-platform digital audio waveform editor that can work with a wide variety of audio codecs including wav, aiff and mp3. (Win, Mac) http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Blender provides a powerful, free and open-source 3D modelling and graphics application that is complete with all the professional features you could want. modelling, rendering, animating, radiosity, textures, virtual cameras…. (Win, Mac) http://www.blender.org
Reaper. Not 100% free but very bloody close to it ($50 for non-commercial use, $175 for pro users) Reaper is an amazingly powerful, totally functional and astoundingly efficient multitrack sequencer and audio system. Reaper is directly comparable to Sony’s Acid, Adobe Audition and Apple SoundtrackPro and exceeds all three in some areas. What is truly staggering is that Reaper has comparable features to these three apps and yet the installer is just 3.2mb in size. So why is it that Acid, SoundTrack and Audition take up multiple DVD’s..? Availible for Mac and Win http://www.reaper.fm/
Colorista Free is a 3-wheel colour correction and grading plugin from Red Giant Software. This is the free version of their powerful Colorista 2 and whilst it may not have the bells and whistles such as power masks, there is no denying its power. Install it in Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro and you’ll never use any of their native colour tools again. Colorista is infinitely easier to use, faster, more efficient and gives better smoother, richer results than any other NLE 3-wheel plugin. There just isnt any reason NOT to use Colorista. http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/free/
Scribus is a wholly competitive alternative to overpriced desktop publising tools such as In-Design and Quark. Scribus is cross platform (Mac, Win, Linux) and suited to the layout of projects large and small - from brochures to complete text-books and anything in between. http://www.scribus.net
Twine A tool for creating interactive stories. Think digital choose your own adventure stories. A very effective tool for learning about game writing. http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/
Korsakow A software application that allows users without programming expertise to create nonlinear, or database, narratives. A K-Film is a database film produced using the Korsakow System. http://korsakow.org/
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Project Development
Directors Boards is a very useful A/V storyboarding and script management tool. Perfect for those who like to storyboard with digital photos Uses a FileMaker Pro engine but doesn’t require FileMaker to be installed. (Win, Mac) http://www.directorsnotebook.com/
XMind. Comprehensive mind-mapping software that provides every tool you could need for the visual structuring of projects incluign things like post-production workflows. In particular XMind is perfect for building visial maps of narrative and character structures for fiction works - screenplays, stageplays or novels. (Win+OSX) http://www.xmind.net/
Dropbox Simply put, there is my life Before Dropbox and my life After Dropbox and Before seems like the dark ages in a cave by comparison. Every other online storage and backup option is positively anemic by comparison to the superb efficiency of Dropbox. Storage, backup, synchronization, file-sharing all in one. Absolutely superb tool that puts all others to shame. Free with 2gb of storage. http://www.dropbox.com
Zotero. A unique solution to the management of research references and the construction of bibliographies. Zotero runs as a plug-in for firefox and makes producing accurate cittations and managing a database of referecnes a piece of proverbial cake. You simply cannot write a thesis without it and its far more efficient (not to mention free) than bloated solutions like EndNote. http://www.zotero.org/
Evernote A great bookmarking and research tool that lest you grab snippets from webpages (or whole pages) and collate them together with tags, notes, tables, images, video and audio. Evernote can run from your browser, its own desktop app, can be accessed and sync’d online. http://www.evernote.com/
Thumber is a free utility for OSX that can analyze any QuickTime movie and produce a mosaic of individual frames. Its a facinatign tool for analyzing form and colour across an entire film at a macro level. its also perfect for anaylizing your favourite films, breaking them down into moments, to see how they work. http://www.threewordtitle.com/thumber/
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Media Wrangling
Mpeg streamclip Cross platform encoding tool that is extremely effective. Will read program and transport stream formats and transcode to a host of MOV and AVI wrapped files. (Win, Mac) http://www.squared5.com/
DVD Shrink is the long standing Windows-based tool for ripping and re-compressing DVD’s. Of course many may use such a tool for illegal copies but with a good feature for selective DVD extraction its perfect for extracting individual scene clips. Such clips are great as examples for developing a films design or for those teaching filmmaking to demonstrate techniques and ideas. (Win) http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/CD-DVD-Rip-Other-Tools/DVD-Shrink.shtml
Mac the ripper. For Mac users who don’t have access to shrink Mac the Ripper is your best option for DVD extraction. Though it lacks the detailed extraction of Shrink it can rip by DVD chapters. (Mac) http://www.mactheripper.org/
Handbrake. A free tool for the Mac for converting file formats and ripping DVD’s. Fast effective and simple. http://handbrake.fr/
Jing very useful utility for making screen-recordings and screengrab images from your computer screen. The free version has ample functionality. http://www.techsmith.com/jing/
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Mobile/iPad
Evernote The iPad version of this superb research, management, bookmarking and note-taking tool. Syncs with your desktop version and stores in the cloud. An incredibly useful tool. http://www.evernote.com/about/download/ipad.php
ClipSketch is a clip-art based drawing tool from the makers of Celtx. It’s a stand-alone version of the Sketch tool found within the Celtx desktop application. Absolutely perfect for filmmakers and cinematographers to produce set plans, blocking and camera setups. And for everyone else its an excellent all round visual drafting tool that is perfectly at home with gesture controls on the iPad. http://clipsketch.com/
Dropbox the iPad version of this outstanding storage, sharing and backup system takes Dropbox to a whole new level. Any file dropped in your Dropbox folder is instantly available on your iPad and sync’d. Perfectly simple. http://www.dropbox.com/ipad
Dragon Dictation Voice to text recognition software. Free and very effective especially for quickly generating notes and text messages by voice. http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/dragon-dictation/id341446764?mt=8
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Utilities
Final Cut Assistant is a clever collection of utilities that make up for soem of the fialings of FCP itself. A clean one-click way to remove and restore preferences as well as serving as a batch-processor for audio files to get them into a uniform uncompressed format. http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/finalcutstudio/finalcutassistant.html
TinkerTool is a free utility that gives you control over a huge array of customization in Mac OS. In bundles together all the open options in one place and gives you a host of options you wouldn’t otherwise be able to easily access. http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html
Perian for Quicktime Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. In simple terms it gives Quicktime the ability to play a host of different file formats that it otherwise cannot. Perian is an absolute Must have for every mac user seeking to mak up for the failings of Quicktime. (Mac) http://perian.org/
Aspect ratio calculator. This is a simple java app that runs directly without installing and allows you to quickly calculate pixel dimensions based on 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. Just plug in a horizontal measurement and the utility will calculate the vertical dimension (or vise versa). Great for scaling videos for online deliver in correct ratios. Cross-platform. (Win, Mac) http://www.wideopendoors.net/design/aspect_ratio_calculator.html
FCStudio uninstaller adds in what the Apple developers seemingly ignored. Using the uninstaller you can cleanly and totally remove FCS from your system leaving behind not a trace. Perfect for re-installs or misguided updates that need to be purged. http://www.digitalrebellion.com/fcs_remover.htm
FCStudio Preference Manager. Avoid the all to common need to ‘trash the preferences’ by using this simple utility to backup and restore your entire preference file settings. The utility doesn’t just handle preferences from FCP but all preferences for all applications in the FCStudio. http://www.digitalrebellion.com/pref_man.htm
Zipeg. There are near countless archive formats around (zip, rar, iso and so on) and Zipeg, available for Mac and windows, is free and unzips them all. (Win, Mac) http://www.zipeg.com/
Video space widget. For Mac users the Digital Heaven VideoSpace calculator runs a very useful widget. Elect your video format (hdv, dvcpro, dv, prores, uncompressed, xdcamhd, imx) and the duration and the widget will do an immediate calculation o the fie size. (Mac) http://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/videospace/
Ice Clean. The Mac OSX is a very efficient operating system but occasionally it demonstrates true absurdity. One such example is that all the built-in OS maintenance features are pre-set to run at ungodly hours of the morning. The geniuses at Apple obviously assume that EVERYONE leaves their computer on all night and doesn’t use sleep mode to allow for this self-cleaning. Of course if you, like me, dont leave your computer on all night because you refuse to be a wasteful, environmental vandal, and do use sleep mode, your poor Mac may never get a chance to clean itself. The answer is IceClean which is a powerful system for manually running the maintenance protocols on your Mac. http://www.macdentro.com/MacDentro/Home.html
HFS Explorer is a free utility for Windows computers that allows you to see a Mac/HFS formatted hard drive (which Windows otherwise cannot communicate with) and copy files off of it to your local Windows drive. An extremely useful little tool when you need to move projects between platforms. http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/hfsx.html
AJA Datarate Calculator - Free tool with Mac and Win versions for calcuating the size of video files using various production codecs and resolutions. http://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJA_Data_Rate_Calculator_v601.zip
AppCleaner. The Mac OSX might appear all high and mighty by not having a dedicated ‘uninstaller’ for removing apps you dont want; simply tossing the *.app file in the trash might appear to be O’s so elegant but the truth is this approach is fraught with issues. Bad uninstalls leaving behind detritus is common place on the mac and your system performance will suffer accordingly. Enter AppCleaner. It’s expunges any trace of an unwanted application, widget, plugin and pref pane. Is quite brilliant but Apple should feel ashamed that they havn’t just bought the AppCleaner code and included it in the OS. http://www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner/
Todos is a application launcher for OSX. Rather than the clumbsy and screen-hogging Apple Dock, Todos provides a clean palette displaying thumbnails of all your applications (or selected ones if you want) that can be launched with a key stroke. Up pops the panel, click the app you want and the panel dissapears. Perfectly simple. http://dbachrach.com/opensoft/index.php?page=Todos
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Online Resources - Audio
Free Sound Project is the internet’s biggest and best collection of open-source and creative commons license sound files. Effects, foley, atmos, music, you name it. Quality is generally very good but you made need to do some file conversions; many files are in Flac and Ogg formats which are great for compressed quality but not readable by many software tools. Free tools such as Switch, reaper and Audacity can convert for you. http://www.freesound.org/
SoundSnap is an excellent free online resource of sound files, samples, loops, foley and audio fx. Files come in a range of formats but mostly Mp3 and WAV meaning conversion is rarely required. http://www.soundsnap.com
FreePlay Music is one of the most popular and diverse collections of royalty free and low-cost production music. The quality is excellent, the range is extremely wide and the costs (when there are any) are very small. Its’s a great place to source music and soundtrack elements for you short films. http://freeplaymusic.com/
OpSound is a goldmine of royalty-free, creative commons music works. Spanning all kinds of styles and genres the quality is high and the website a breeze to navigate. A great resource for temp music track to help with the edit or even to find score and sound design music when you dont have access to a composer. http://www.opsound.org/
The Sound Exchange is an online resource setup by the UK Philharmonia orchestra that provides a wide collection of music samples from orchestral instruments searchable via a range of parameters - pitch, duration and instrument.
http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/thesoundexchange/make_music/samples/library/
Jamendo is an open library of free Creative Commons licensed music. With more than 11,000 albums by nearly 7000 artists and bands it’s an impressive resource driven by a slick and well designed website. It should be at the top of any search list for music for your next film project. http://www.jamendo.com/en/
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Online Resources - Image
Stock Xchng is an open archive of royalty-free images and photography. It has a comprehensive tagging and search engine and the quality standard of the images is extremely high and available at high ppi print resolutions. An excellent resource for both pre-production visualization and planning as well as projects requiring stills such as motion graphics, title sequences and effects shots. http://www.sxc.hu/
The Internet Archive offers permanent access to historical collections of movies, music, and images that exist in digital format. Media on the Archive is either in the public domain or under creative commons. The collection is vast and in particular hosts a huge collection of early cinema that can be downloaded and re-mixed free. http://www.archive.org
Free Pixels is an online resource of free stock images http://www.freepixels.com/
Vintage Pixels is a similar free image resource with a focus on historical and scanned images. http://www.vintagepixels.com/
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Online Creative Tools
Kuler is a dynamic colour palette utility for coordinating and selecting colour in swatch groups. It allows you to build co-ordinated colour groups and themes and is an excellent tool for production designers to hep with pre-visualization and collaborative communication between design departments such as wardrobe, set and props. kuler.adobe.com
MoodStream is an incredibly dynamic and flexible media brainstorming and visualization tool. Built form the massive archives of Getty Images, MoodStream allows you to assemble and collect together images, video and sounds into palettes of media. A superb tool for production designers as well as motion graphics artists looking to trigger new ideas of image assembly. Similarly for Directors and Producers MoodStream can be an amazing tool for preparing a visualization package to help illustrate visual concepts and ideas to the production team. moodstream.gettyimages.com
Avairy. A complete creative media production suite online. Avairy offers a range of software tools for working with sound and images including layer-based image editing (a la Photoshop), vector imaging (Adobe Illustrator) and audio editing.With both free accounts and extremely cheap pro accounts, Avairy is a very strong offering that gts better all the time. http://aviary.com/
Weebly. There are many free website hosting and building systems around. Much of this territory is taken up by the various blog CMS’s that serve as more generic website tools as much as specifically for blogs. Wordpress, Blogger, Movable Type. But all of these have rather overt restrictions over how much control you can exert of the look and shape of your site. Weebly is free, simple, totally easy to use and yet can produce very effective custom websites from scratch without neededing to know any code at all. Drag and drop everything. http://www.weebly.com/
Prezi A vector-based presentation system that allows you to go WAY beyond Powerpoint. prezi is spatial, zooming, holds vidoe and images, can be flexibly navigated in linear and non-linear ways, And it’s a a piece of cake to learn. http://prezi.com/
Scribd is an online hosting and publishign platform for eclectronic documents, ebooks and e-zines. The strength of Scribd is in the ability to generate a scalable embed of a document in a very reable format. http://www.scribd.com/
