Pre-Production Software - NOT Celtx

Hello. I'm very new to this site ('new' meaning, literally just signed up), so I have no idea if this post has been covered yet or not. I am a media student and currently in my first year at University in the UK, and we're working on at least 2 projects every semester.
I was wondering if anyone knew of anyplace where I might be able to get pre-production documents, such as call sheets, budget, scheduling and so on, through software or an online source for free? I know of Celtx, I use it all the time, however, it's not that great for this area of pre-production.
Any help would be grand and fully appreciated.

Thanks!
SW
 
Movie Magic Scheduling and Movie Magic Budgeting are really the industry standard software for that kinda stuff. You've also got Gorilla if you're on a mac which is a lot cheaper, though it doesn't do budgeting.

I think Celtx is the best free program for breaking down a script and scheduling, but their call sheets leave a lot to be desired and you can't buget on them.
 
Someone linked to some documents a few days ago made by forum member SonnyBoo (Peter John Ross).

These might be worth a look

http://www.sonnyboo.com/downloads/downloads.htm

This is what I was going to suggest too. He has a ton of great stuff for free. Obviously not full fledged software that is the industry standard but it's all free and legal. I haven't used the stuff on his site myself but I've looked through it. Besides screenplays and shot and lighting scripts I don't know much about the pre-production area.
 
Movie Magic Scheduling and Movie Magic Budgeting are really the industry standard software for that kinda stuff. You've also got Gorilla if you're on a mac which is a lot cheaper, though it doesn't do budgeting.

I think Celtx is the best free program for breaking down a script and scheduling, but their call sheets leave a lot to be desired and you can't buget on them.

+1.

From what I hear, Adobe is making strides in their software for this, "Adobe Story" but as far as I know, it isn't up to the level of Movie Magic softwares. I don't believe that Adobe has budgets in it either. Anyone confirm/deny this?
 
You can use Adobe Story for free now also:

http://www.adobe.com/ca/products/story-family.html

The paid version is cloud/subscription only, $10 a month for the Story, or included with many of the larger subscriptions.

Not sure if it does budget, but it does do strips better than Celtx I think. Although I prefer Celtx for writing/numbering. And I think Celtx is a great company that works very hard to foster new filmmakers with their seed money programs and software availability.

CraigL
 
I find pre-production software such as Movie Magic or Gorilla to be clunky and not at all worth the price tag nor the high learning curve. Perhaps it is the industry standard, but big productions have different needs than us 'indie' folks. I doubt you would even utilize 10% of the program if you bought it.

My preference is to do things the old-fashioned way. Colored pencils for lining the script, microsoft word for breakdowns and excel for production strips. Cost: $0.
 
My primitive hand-written records were fine for smaller projects, but did not scale up for my feature. I've had success with Filemaker databases for my work in VFX, so I decided to take the leap into some production software.

EP Budgeting: A little much for my needs. I currently use Sonnyboo's Excel template.

1) Writing: Final Draft
2) Breakdown: Import Final Draft file into Final Draft Tagger
3) Schedule: Import Tagger file into EP Scheduling.
4) Call Sheets: Import EP Scheduling data into CASPER (Excel workbook) generates Call Sheets*

*I've just started learning Casper, so I don't have an opinion on it. But, the promise if auto-magic call sheets it hard to resist. I post as I figure it out.

- Thomas
 
Movie Magic Scheduling and Movie Magic Budgeting are really the industry standard software for that kinda stuff. You've also got Gorilla if you're on a mac which is a lot cheaper, though it doesn't do budgeting.

I think Celtx is the best free program for breaking down a script and scheduling, but their call sheets leave a lot to be desired and you can't buget on them.

Jax-rox is right on all points. As an AD, I would love to use something other than MM Scheduling (they've made some small improvements over the years), but like our favorite word processor MS Word, some industry standards are hard to step around.

I don't use Celtx for breakdowns-- have to go to MM sooner or later and may as well start there.

My two centavos-
 
I find pre-production software such as Movie Magic or Gorilla to be clunky and not at all worth the price tag nor the high learning curve. Perhaps it is the industry standard, but big productions have different needs than us 'indie' folks. I doubt you would even utilize 10% of the program if you bought it.

My preference is to do things the old-fashioned way. Colored pencils for lining the script, microsoft word for breakdowns and excel for production strips. Cost: $0.

While I understand Dreadylocks' issues with the software (10% might be a bit low on utilization, however, even on a short film :-D), a lot of productions want their AD (or whomever) to deliver MM schedules and breakdowns. I try to get paid to AD these days, and in my experience, most projects ask for MM breakdowns and schedules.

So much depends on the nature of the project, cast size, modern or period piece, props, etc. Having used most software posters in this thread have, MM is still the best taking all issues into consideration. I admit it's quite clunky until you get used to it.

I use an array of colored highlighters to break the script down, then move it all into MM Scheduling. Haven't had to use MM Budgeting yet, so no opinion there...
 
I guess you don't listen. And are replying to (and not reading) any related discussion that is bumped = spam.
 
no software needed

use excel. its a lot easier and customizable to what you need. after you do it once, you have a template going forward. a lot of the software makes things overtly complicated and hard to read. just my two cents.
 
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