Author Topic: ESCRIPTS: Final draft, new scripts, and electronic markups  (Read 4486 times)

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erin

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Ok folks, who were is proficient with computerized scripts?

I'm ready to make my calling script fully electronic (easy enough on a word document) in part because i have to hand over the show for a week later this week.

I love doing new work, but i'm starting to hate final draft and need to find a better way to convert documents.  My intern is sharing the playwright/director's copy of FD in order to keep the script current, and to print out new pages (since the PW/Dir is too busy to do that himself.) and has been fiutzing around with it trying to come up with a sharable document with no simple result.

Trying to save a final draft document as a word document makes the formating go insane.  It takes longer to reformat than it would to retype.  

You can save the document as a PDF format, and i got a trial version of full Acrobat Professional so that i could make modifications, but i can't figure out how to make textual changes or insert regular text (not a text box or callout or pop up window).

I don't have a few hundred extra dollars to throw around on conversion software or scanners.

How do i get a viable electronic script out of a final draft document?
« Last Edit: Jun 08, 2009, 11:16 pm by PSMKay »

stagebear

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Final draft, new scripts, and electronic markups
« Reply #1 on: Apr 04, 2006, 12:20 am »
last time i worked with final draft, i had the same issues. the person who made the script cheated it and when i put it into word, all of the formatting went crazy.
fortunately, after a week or two, i never had to go back to FD, but was able to make updates in word only.
i tried creating a script in it, but had glitches with that also. - i'm not a fan.

hope you find a solution

NickySM

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Computerized Scripts
« Reply #2 on: Apr 05, 2006, 12:48 pm »
Hey guys, I'm not really sure what Final Draft is??? Is that a program to block scenes on the computer instead of having to have a book? I'm trying to take blocking and make it computerized rather then blocking manually in my book, can someone give me the heads up??

Nick.

hbelden

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Final draft, new scripts, and electronic markups
« Reply #3 on: Apr 05, 2006, 03:34 pm »
Final Draft is an industry standard scriptwriting software, used mainly in television and film, I believe.  It's very easy for one person to use, and has excellent benefits of pagination control, name changes, and scene swapping; it runs great reports on the language and structure of the script; and I think the current versions have more tools to help with the actual writing and plotting of the script.

The way it does all this is to follow VERY strict rules about formatting.  If the person working on the script doesn't know all these rules, then transferring the script to Word is a real nightmare, as above posters have said.

I can explain most of the rules of Final Draft formatting, if you want, and I've had success (though not much) in transferring the script to Word by controlling Word's Style menu.  I can explain more there if you want.

Nowadays I do all my scripts in Word if I have time before prep week starts.  I don't know of any easy way to add cue lines or blocking notes on top of an FD document, nor of any easy way to open a multi-page .pdf document in an application (Word, Photoshop, Pages) that will let you draw on top of it.

FD was created for writers, NOT for SMs.
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