This is the latest post of our new series on the blog which guides you through the whole process of making a short film. We suggest free tools for filmmakers that can help you in making your projects come true. As a start we checked out the theoretical basis of filmmaking and found the Top 3 E-books on Short Films available free of charge on the web. Then we got into the most hated side of the professional short film industry: paperwork. We showed you the Top 3 Websites Offering Free Tools For Filmmakers full with free samples covering everything paper-based that is useful for production. In this blog entry we are going to focus on the very first part of making a short film: pre-production. We surfed the net and found the best free softwares to help you through this important phase.

Celtx
Pretty much everything you need for pre-production, Celtx is the world’s first all-in-one media pre-production software. It has everything you need to take your story from concept to production. Celtx replaces ‘paper, pen & binder’ pre-production with a digital approach that’s more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share. It’s multimedia friendly, so helps you produce all types of media (like film, theatre plays, novels, comics, advertisements, video games, music video or podcasts). It’s all in one. You can use Celtx for the entire production process – write scripts, storyboard scenes and sequences, sketch setups, develop characters, breakdown and tag elements, schedule productions, prepare and circulate informative reports for cast and crew. Furthermore it’s widespread. More than 1,000,000 media creators in 170 countries create with Celtx in 30 different languages. It is mainly used by independent filmmakers and studio professionals, and by students in over 1,800 universities and film schools – many that have adopted Celtx for teaching and class work submission.

Scriptbuddy
ScriptBuddy is a web-based screenwriting software, which is easy to handle because there is no software to install and you can use it on any Internet-ready computer. ScriptBuddy incorporates all of the industry-standard screenplay formatting rules, from margins and indentations to proper page break placement. As you write, it automatically conforms your script to proper movie screenplay format specifications. Aside from automatic screenplay formatting, it also has an outline of your screenplay with numbered scenes as well as an editable character list making it easy to find your way around your screenplay. At last but definitely not least there is an online screenwriting community around ScriptBuddy. If you decide to publish your screenplay online, you can be sure to get some feedback, because the website has tens of thousands of people browsing and leaving feedback for screenplays every month. It is like getting script coverage for free!

StoryBoard Pro
StoryBoard Pro is designed to give teachers, students, and home movie makers a tool to plan ahead when creating video projects. It features the ability to enter shot titles and descriptions, complete with planned lengths and edited order. It allows you to indicate the different shot types (video, still, audio, music or titles). You can also import existing video clips, still pictures and sounds to better illustrate each shot. It can be used to add filming and editing tips to the shots. StoryBoard also allows to print copies of your storyboard for use while filming or editing and to print blank storyboard worksheets for brainstorming new ideas.

Next time we will investigate the topic of free production softwares. We hope that the simple fact of having so many tools available for free is going to inspire every filmmaker to start a new project and do it right by using everything that’s useful and accessible. Good luck to everybody and remember that there are no more excuses of not doing a short!