I have recently started to develop my first iPhone game. My Alien Fish is a casual game where you Buy, Breed and Sell over 40 species of alien fish.
I’m going to post updates with development on a different website: www.myalienfish.com
The plan is to have this game out no later than summer ‘11.
Here are a few pictures to get you started.
The fish tank.
Buying fish at the shop.
I recently bought the Writers Pack addon for Celtx. This allows you to write in fullscreen. The problem though is that the text is aligned to the left of the screen and looks ugly. I’ve looked at text editors such as Writeroom and Ommwriter and they’re really nice fullscreen editors, but not good for screenplays.
So how can we bring this look to Celtx?
Well in Celtx your script is actually a html webpage because celtx is built off firefox, the web browser. This means we can override the CSS stylesheet and make it look how we want.
Don’t understand? Don’t worry, i’ve uploaded some files at the bottom of this post you can just drop into the correct folder.
Look at what you can do:
If you do understand then it’s as simple as creating a file called ‘userChrome.css’ inside the folder:
<home>/Library/Application Support/Celtx/Profiles/<somenumber>.default/Chrome/
In the CSS file I recommend you wrap everything in
@media screen{
}
To center the text, create a body tag with margins left and right to auto.
Also put ‘!important’ after every parameter, for example:
body {
margin-left: auto !important;
}
There’s the following tags:
p.sceneheaderThe .softbreak tag is for page breaks, you can emulate the pagebreaks you see in the PDF version.
I’ve got two versions. One that is designed to emulate the PDF look of the script and another that emulates Ommwriter.
Downloads:
Celtx-pdf
Celtx-ommwriter
Extract to:
<home>/Library/Application Support/Celtx/Profiles/<somenumber>.default/Chrome/
Friday was our first shooting day of the Take2 series. Who directed it? Me! Well, I directed story B and John Stokke directed story A.
From past experience I knew directing this wasn’t going to be easy. Directing takes a lot of guts, clear communication and plenty of preparation. I had the first two down, but lacked the preparation. The night before, after working out a shot list, I got a call from the project co-ordinator that one of the actors had dropped out. I knew these kind of things happen sooner or later, so you have to ‘go with the flow’. The writers did an amazing job of quickly reacting and adapting the script. However, this meant the scene changed and the location changed. I had a chat with my producer and we agreed we’ll have to just improvise on the day. Now, sometimes I can improvise and when I can i’m great, but sometimes I just don’t have that spark. I didn’t want to take that risk so I woke up at 6:30 am and headed over to Starbucks to waken my mind and work out the scenes.
The shoot.
The very first thing I had planned is to get friendly with the actors. The actor – director relationship is vital. A director needs to maintain trust between the cast and the crew. Both actors, Michelle Yim and Sam Sadler, we’re a treat to work with. We started in the park and the scene required hot chocolate to be spilt over the actress (we used cold coffe btw). The scene went without a hiccup, I chose to shoot the spill at 50fps so the information is captured. I also did a few takes with an empty cup so the editors have something to cut before and after the spill.
The next scene was really fun. The two actors had to lie stoned and talk rubbish. My cameraman/dp, Dan Homer, was a tremendous help and came up with some really tasty shots. The difference between TV and Film:
The writers will probably hate me for this but I didn’t find the dialogue in the stoned scene funny. Usually, in film, the director has the power to change the lines however here I had to ring up the production office. After reasoning for the change I got a prompt ‘no’. On the other hand, this did make me approach the scene at a more lateral angle, I couldn’t change the lines so I had to convince the actors to play the scene with credibility. They had never been stoned and neither had I. You can’t change the lines but you can change the actions, the tone and the timing.
Nearly there.
It was during the last scene I started to feel the pressure. I had four new actors that came over from Story A. I didn’t have time to build up a relationship so it felt a little awkward trying to direct them. My producer, Yanis, helped keep things in check. We had a healthy push pull relationship. I want the best performance and cinematography while the producer, who is still concerned about both, is making sure we stay on schedule and, at the end of the day, have complete coverage of the script.
Despite the sudden change of script, which happens even on the big budget films, the shoot went smoother than I had anticipated. I did feel the pressure in the last hour of the day but I kept my focus and my cool, at least I think I did 
Had those problems not been there I believe future directors and myself could do great things with this series. Go for it!
Day two of the Small Screen Production Module.
Today we spilt up into our groups.
The writing team spent the whole day inventing the characters and one line synopsis of each episode.
The production team set up the production office, which looks awesome! I’ll upload pictures tomorrow.
The edit team have set up a bulletproof editing system. The most important thing you need in an edit system is redundancy, so we have three hard-drives, two for backup and one for transfer. There are two edit stations so one can capture footage while another edits.
And there were two shooting teams testing out the equipment and roles looking for any problems we may run into when doing the real thing.
I was producer for shooting team A. It was my job to make sure we get shoot some footage, didn’t matter what, but make sure we understand the process and take note of any problems we come across and understand how we can prevent or act around. For example it started to rain and we didn’t have a rain cover, which means we have to remember next time to check all kit before moving to set. When doing Public interviews the presenter needs to stay near the camera so the interviewee is looking towards the camera, etc…
Our team is immense! We have two writing teams! That means there are going to be two story lines being written simultaneously, there will be two shooting teams filming the two story lines simultaneously and while we shoot episode one the writers will be writing episode two. And the end of the days shoot the team will receive next days script, every role will change to someone else. We have three bibles. A writing bible, a production bible and an edit bible. The writing bible is vital for each writer team to stay within a coherent story world. The production bible is to ensure everyone follows strict guidelines within the production office, and the same goes with the edit bible.
Tomorrow we will be testing all systems further. I will also be hosting a meeting to discuss about marketing and distribution. I hope soon we can get a website up dedicated to the project and come up with how we are going to show these episodes and in what format.
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