Here is an interesting surprise coming right ahead of NAB, Celtx has launched a screenplay plug-in extension for Adobe Premiere Pro. This is more than just a way to open up a PDF to read it while inside Premiere. It’s full integration where you can tag scenes in the screenplay, associate those scenes with footage, and have the tool do a bit of organization to make getting through your scenes faster and easier.

I know what you’re thinking, especially if you’re familiar with the what, up until now, has been the gold-standard of script-based editing (and really the only standard) Avid ScriptSync. How does the Celtx Screenplay Plugin compare? I asked Celtx this very question.

Have a look at the Celtx demo video to get a closer idea of how this thing works.

That’s some interesting tech there. I can see this could be a pretty big time-saver in the basic setup of a project. I fully expect new features to come along to make this even better. (Never mind the audio being thrown out of sync in that demo above, as I think that’s potentially a Premiere Pro issue and not from the plug-in.) While the demo in the above video is relatively simple, what I would like to see is how well this works with a 90-minute feature film or a 12-episode episodic. That’s where the most interest will probably be.

I had a few questions about this new Celtx screenplay plugin, so I asked the folks at Backlight.

How does the Celtx Screenplay Plugin work with dialog scenes?

Right now, we enable the ability to associate clips with any element or section of the script, whether that’s scene headings, shots, dialogue, or action. To speed up the association of dialogue, we’ve added a script search functionality to help users isolate specific lines.

We intend to introduce more dialogue-focused functionality post-launch, including timestamp-based tagging so users can zero in on specific portions of associated clips, as well as automated transcription-driven alignment.

It looks like the design is to edit from the script but if you’re well into your edit and have an hourlong timeline for a show, can you use the Celtx Screenplay Plugin to jump around an existing edit?

You can use the Celtx plugin to add any number of scripts to an existing project. The import action will generate script-specific scene bins to compliment any existing organization that you’ve created.

You can use the plugin’s navigation tools on an existing project as well, providing you go through the asset markup process on the script(s) that you’ve added. Note that these navigation components are powered by the source monitor/active bins and not the timeline itself.

Am I seeing it right that once media is attached to a script then that part of the script is highlighted to show there is footage attached? What if you want to attach multiple clips to a single part of the script?

Yes. The markup tags can contain multiple clips, and the user controls the span of the tag to indicate relative duration. The order in which clips are added to a markup tag will inform the order in which they’re injected with our timeline controls.

Any plans to use AI to be able to analyze the script and then automatically sync/tag footage in the script?

Yes, absolutely. Assisted/automated alignment of clips to script based on dialogue transcription is our top roadmap priority.

And then the elephant in the room … Is this seen as Adobe Premiere Pro’s answer to Avid’s ScriptSync?

We can’t speak for Adobe, but this plugin does represent what we hope will be a long-term partnership to enable screenplay/script-driven workflows in Premiere Pro.

This will be a nice addition to scripted editing in Adobe Premiere Pro. I mean, there’s not really anything like this currently available as a third-party addition (that I’m aware of), so it might enable some new workflows, which is a good thing.

While I think Final Draft is still the industry screenwriting standard, Celtx does support importing of the Final Draft .fdx format. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes. If more automation and AI integration are indeed added in the future, the Celtx Screenplay Plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro might give Avid’s ScriptSync a worthy competitor.