Celtx screenwriting software for e-learning

Recently a friend in the mass media asked for advice on preparing documents for presentation to executive management. They asked if they should use Powerpoint or Microsoft word. But perhaps something like the Celtx free screenwriting software is needed. This might also be useful for conference presentations and e-learning.

Celtx is designed for writing plays for stage, screenplays for movies and TV, AV scripts and radio plays. It allows setting out who says what and what is seen and heard. It also allows the creation of an animated storyboard, which is used to give an idea of that the final production will be like. This is conceptually similar to an animated Powerpoint presentation: the software steps through still visuals with text and audio explaining what is happening.

Celtx has versioning and collaboration features using a central server, conceptually similar to the Integrated Content Environment (ICE) courseware tool. A seminar or lecture partly involves giving a performance, and so it might be interesting to consider how the techniques used for live performances might be applied to academia and education.

E-learning can include audio, animation or video. But much of the audiovisual material produced for education has low production values and looks clumsy when compared to professional multimedia the students will have seen. This is partly due to the limited funds and time available for producing education content. But it may also be because educators are not provided with tools or training needed for audio-visual production (I did a course at TAFE to make education videos). Perhaps tools like Celtx could be used and integrated into other e-learning tools.

Australian film director Martin Wilson

On my travels through Greece recently, I met Australian film director Martin Wilson of Soul Films. His company does quite a few TV commercials, as well as longer projects, so I put in a plug for Canberra for video production. This was at the breakfast table at Camping Heraklia (run by the Tziouvaras Brothers) at Neos Panteleimonas, Katerini, Greece, just behind the beach. It was a little intimidating for a computer person, as there were a table of creative types.

Outsourced

After reviewing the e-learning system in the seat of a long Malaysian Airlines flight I decided to watch a movie. Outsourced is a romantic comedy about an American call center manager who is sent to India to train staff in the outsourced call center. He tells the staff to claim to be from "Chic-a-go". In the end he comes to terms with India after some lessons in life and the world beyond the USA.

This is not a documentary and you would learn as much about call center operations from this as you would about e-mail from watching "You've Got Mail". The Indian streets shown looked too clean and almost deserted. The female romantic lead was just a bit too clever and willing to explain the world outside the USA to the American. But it was good fun and might be useful education for those who have not been outside North America.

This is a good airplane movie (that is one step down from a rental movie: one that is worth watching when you are stuck on an eight hour flight). ;-)

See also:

• Outsourced on DVD.
• Bollywood Comedy

Jane Austen meets J. R. R. Tolkien

Joe Wright's 2005 film of the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice
is grimier than previous depictions, with the Bennett sisters having to trudge through muddy fields to reach stately homes. I had the strange feeling I was actually seeing what a screen adaption of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings should have looked like.

Darcy and Elizabeth walk around the ground of the fictional Pemberley. This is actually the Gardens of Stourhead with its Temple of Apollo and Palladian Bridge.

Stourhead is at Warminster, about 100 km from Oxford, where Tolkien worked. Stourhead and Blenheim Palace , just outsiode Oxford, have grounds by English Landscape architect, Capability Brown. If middle earth was set in a real place, it may well look like Brown's landscape.

Desks in Space

Taking a break from designing a flexible learning center, I decided to watch a TV sci-fi film. I was amused to find the curved desks I was looking at for the learning center were considered sufficiently hi-tech to be used in the film on a space station.

If you look at the space station commander's office at about one hour into Zenon: the Zequel (Disney 2001), you will see it is very similar to the "Jelly Bean" desks used at RMIT Library in Melbourne. Also the coffee table in Zenon's family room on the space station seems to be from the same furniture range.

The film was made in New Zealand, and if someone could ask set decorator Kirsty Griffin, Props Buyer Christine Mangen or Art Department Coordinator Anna Graves where they got the desks, that would be useful.