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Tools of the Trade / Re: Digital Prompt Books (Do you use them?)
« on: Jan 29, 2011, 07:15 pm »
This is an old topic- but one I've been thinking about more and more lately. I've done digital calling scripts for my last 2 theatre shows, and have been really happy with the result. It takes a bit of time and effort, but I love how clean and easy to read my script is (not to mention being able to print backups does a lot for my piece of mind).
One of the shows was performed in one venue, and then remounted in another a few months later, and it was easy to print a new copy of the script to tech the second production, and make the necessary cue changes.
Callouts are essentially text boxes with a "tail" that you can drag to land wherever you need it in the text. You can put arrows or whatever you want on the ends of them- so the text box can point to where the cue should be called. There are a variety of styles to the text boxes- you can have them look like cartoon speech bubbles or other shapes if you like.
Yes- most of my cues for my current show look something like this: (within a text box)
LQ111- fade up SL platform (3ct)
SQ213- volume down
PQ223- fade up title in screens 1/2
autofollow PQ223.1- title out
If I need more space for one of the boxes, I manipulate the formatting of the text on the page (get rid of stage directions, or something similar). I use page breaks to keep the numbering the same.
One of the shows was performed in one venue, and then remounted in another a few months later, and it was easy to print a new copy of the script to tech the second production, and make the necessary cue changes.
I'd never heard of a "call-out" feature in Word (I'm on a Mac) and can't find it in their Help feature either, so explanation of that might be helpful too.
Callouts are essentially text boxes with a "tail" that you can drag to land wherever you need it in the text. You can put arrows or whatever you want on the ends of them- so the text box can point to where the cue should be called. There are a variety of styles to the text boxes- you can have them look like cartoon speech bubbles or other shapes if you like.
I've been a life-long pencil/ruler person, and I do like to keep the blocking in the same script when I tech and run the show, plus I write in a lot of details about what the cues are for and need to find places to do that near each cue, not always in the same place - is that possible in an electronic version?
Yes- most of my cues for my current show look something like this: (within a text box)
LQ111- fade up SL platform (3ct)
SQ213- volume down
PQ223- fade up title in screens 1/2
autofollow PQ223.1- title out
If I need more space for one of the boxes, I manipulate the formatting of the text on the page (get rid of stage directions, or something similar). I use page breaks to keep the numbering the same.