Adobe Story: peeks only until late 2009

Adobe Story, a collaborative scriptwriting tool, is expected to be available on Adobe Labs in late 2009. The Adobe Education Technologies blog is offering a sneak peek with New Adobe Story and the Future of Script Writing.

Also, there's bit more at Millimeter Magazine: Adobe Story Targets Screenwriters (video interview), and the earlier demo of the app nicely done by FreshDV.

By the way, interesting blogs with screenwriting news and in-depth analysis include John August and Mystery Man on Film (a doorway to more).

It will be interesting to see how Adobe joins Story to audio transcription features in Production Premium and if they acknowledge that there's already a market filled with script-oriented apps like Celtx (open source pre-production software), Final Draft, Gorilla, and others.

CasparCG: the free Flash-based video app

CasparCG is a free open source Flash-based video app that is being used in Swedish national TV broadcasts for lower-third name signs, election results, game show scores, and channel idents. Still unseen here at AEP, the website describes it as an app that can play common movie formats, with alpha, as well as both SWF’s and FLV’s, in realtime as your hardware allows.

Until now mostly only referred to obliquely on Twitter, Filmmaking Central interviewed developer Olle Soprani. Here's the interview -- and be sure to check out Filmmaking Central's rollout of a variety of NAB goodies, including particleIllusion coming to After Effects and Jerzy Drozda, Jr (maltaannon) on 3D Serpentine.

'Wild Style' titles (+ Zephyr interview)

The Art of the Title Sequence looks at Wild Style and adds an interview with Zephyr.

A gentle introduction to expressions in AE

Chris and Trish Meyer have posted another free movie from the Focal Press book After Effects Apprentice (2nd Edition). This one's "A gentle introduction to expressions."

A tool to verify digital video

As a tardy but dedicated reader of the New York Times 'Science Times' section on Tuesdays, this article finally came out of the in-box -- John Markoff's "A Tool to Verify Digital Records, Even as Technology Shifts." Here's an excerpt:

"...a group of researchers at the University of Washington are releasing the initial component of a public system to provide authentication for an archive of video interviews with the prosecutors and other members of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Rwandan genocide.... This system is intended to be available for future use in digitally preserving and authenticating first-hand accounts of war crimes, atrocities and genocide.

Such tools are of vital importance because it has become possible to alter digital text, video and audio in ways that are virtually undetectable to the unaided human eye and ear."

Building Effects From The Ground Up

Forging Fire notes a video tutorial for After effects from Pro Juice that yields Twitch-like effects with just built-in filters.

Nick from ProJuice uses Wigglerama (an AE preset), CC Repetile, Lens Blur, Levels, Curves, and Wave Warp to get under the hood and customize this kind of effect.

Bloom on Magic Bullet, cameras, FCP

Director Philip Bloom is everywhere this week:

• Color Grading in Final Cut Pro with Magic Bullet Looks on the Red Giant podcast
• A Prolost post, Philip Bloom's GH1 First Impressions
• A MacVideo interview, Philip Bloom on NAB 2009, Camera Technology and Final Cut Pro

Update: Here's one of his reports from NAB: