Firefox Flicks Backstage

A couple of posts back, I mentioned our new “Friend of Firefox”, Celtx. Talking with the Celtx folks about the international reach they’ve achived over the last year, I heard this great story and wanted to relay it to you all.

We’ve been getting a lot of support from the International filmmaking community. One such user, Max Makowski , Writer/Director of One Last Dance, a movie premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and starring American born Harvey Keitel and Taiwanese actress Vivian Hsu, is an ardent fan of Celtx.

As I began my latest project, a friend of mine pointed me towards Celtx. I now feel like I have a collaborator in my computer. Celtx helps me corral and organize my ideas. It also gives me the tools to then incorporate these newly-tamed thoughts directly into my script. The fact that the team behind Celtx is as passionate about their software as any independent screenwriter is about their story only adds to the list of benefits one gets when using Celtx.

Thanks Max! And good luck with the premier!

I’m not a screenwriter but I’ve seen Celtx in action, and this isn’t the first time I’ve heard about passionate Celtx users. It’s not only an amazing tool, it’s also a great demonstration of the Firefox platform.

Producing a 30-second ad often takes more than just one person. If you’re a writer, director, actor, producer, editor, cameraman, whatever, and you’re looking for collaborators to create your Firefox Flicks entries, please use the comments here to partner up.

We may be able to set up a collaboration forum, but until then, feel free to advertise yourself or your needs right here.

Great music is inspirational. Lots of cliches coming to mind for me: the soundtrack of your life, etc. Cliches for a reason, I think, which is that music adds that special sauce to whatever it is you’re doing or watching at the moment.

For your Flicks ad project, please make sure that if you use copyrighted music that you have written permission from the owner. If you don’t, we can’t select your submission as a winner or even show it here.

There’s a whole slew of public domain music, artwork and other content that you can tap into for your project. Check out Creative Commons search for some options. You can also search Creative Commons through the search bar in Firefox: in the upper right corner of your browser, click on the triangle on the left of the search bar, then pick Creative Commons from the search engine choices listed.

Our FAQ has some more leads for source material (look for question #17) - feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

-Paul

While you all have been hard at work producing some great commercials for Firefox, the Flicks team (mostly Cheryl,) has been hard at work building relationships with key organizations in the film, TV, and advertising world to help take Firefox to the next level.

The first organization to offer support was a very cool company called Celtx. Celtx was a natural fit because they already know Mozilla and Firefox. They build a very cool piece of software that’s based on Mozilla technologies and delivers “the first comprehensive software package designed for people who work in the pre-production of film, TV, theatre and new media.”

This set of tools is very cool. You can read more about it over at the Celtx overview page.

We’ve been working with Celtx, though their established channels, to reach out to potential Flicks participants, and as we go forward we’ll also be working with them to enhance our Firefox Flicks awards package.

Stay tuned for more on Celtx involvement.

Blake, Cheryl, and I have been reaching out to schools this week and yesterday we had some real success. I got a reply from a very helpful faculty member at UCSD’s Department of Visual Arts and he’s agreed to let all of the students there know about the project.

If you attend or teach at a school with a video, film, animation, CG, or other media program and can help get the word out to students at your school, please email me at asa@mozilla.org. I’d be very happy to work with you to get the word out about this project.