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Topic: Screenwriting Software

Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 06-10-2007 01:08 PM

I'm looking for some feedback about three different screen writing software programs: Final Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter and Sophocles.

My father writes novels for a living, but is currently in the early stages of a developing a comedy with a friend of his who directs a lot of TV series episodes and commercials. He asked me what I thought would be good and I just told him, "hell, I don't know." Final Draft is all I'd ever heard of screenwriters using, and then they typically submit printed scripts instead of anything like electronic files. The couple scripts I wrote in art school I just hammered out in Word Perfect.

Anyway, I figured there would probably be at least a few members in this forum who have tried one or all of these products. Sophocles seems like it might be pretty good to use for all the features it contains and the different angle it has on the story development process. It also costs a heck of a lot less than Final Draft.

Opinions?

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 06-10-2007 02:46 PM

MicroSoft Word or any text editing program is fine. I've used Final Draft and it did not entertain me. It is easier to write shit in applications that work in a straightforward manner like Word and other crap like that. If you are pretentious you may want to look into Final Draft or something similar. If most screenwriters tend to use Final Draft, then I'd recommend staying FAR away from that program as it just might have a bug which makes any scripts written in it suck.

I hope your dad is not Tom Clancy. He's boring.

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Jennifer Pan
THE JEN!

Posts: 1219
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: Nov 2003

posted 06-10-2007 03:37 PM

http://www.scriptbuddy.com/

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 06-10-2007 03:47 PM

He's not Tom Clancy. Although Tom Clancy has read my father's books. I just wish my father has sold as many books as Clancy.

I would agree that standard word processors like MS Word and Word Perfect are fine for screen writing -as long as you truly understand all the formatting rules.

I've looked at Final Draft before and don't like its interface. It's just really clunky looking. I understand it's like the "industry standard" for screen writers. That reminds me of what used to be the situation in page layout software. Quark Xpress has been the most widely used program for composing newspapers and magazines for many years. Quark is expensive and I think it is pretty freaking clunky. In recent years Adobe has really been hammering Quark very hard with Adobe InDesign. The new CS3 upgrade is a pretty important update.

Sophocles looks pretty interesting. It has a better looking and more straight forward interface. The program's reporting features seem pretty cool. You can sort scenes by location, track which characters have higher percentages of dialog and all sorts of other stuff. The word processing programs won't do much of that. For $120 it doesn't seem bad. And there's a demo you can try before buying the full version.

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 06-10-2007 06:24 PM

Screw formatting. The following is fine for me:

Billy and Max are having a casual conversation when suddenly Max gets up to leave.

Billy: Where are you going, Max?

Max: Why I'm off to have hardcore sex with a girl I met this morning. She has a friend. Wanna come along?

Billy: But I'm all out of condoms!

Max: Condoms are for losers! Besides, we won't tell them our real names if something happens anyway.

Billy: Gee I dunno, Max. I think I'll stay at home and study.

Max: Geeez! I can't believe you! Have fun with your books you stupid little nerd!

Max leaves. Billy was right about the condoms. The very next day Max died from fatal Herpes.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 06-10-2007 09:38 PM

Every story is supposed to have three things: a beginning, a middle and an end. Max found out about the poisonous back end.

I agree the formatting rules seem pretentious and stupid. The worse problem is not everyone working in a production company developing a screenplay has an adequate number of brain cells. They might not understand seeing something different yet just as easy to read. I don't know. I guess it's just a fashion thing, or tradition or maybe an O.C.D. thing. Thank God movie producers and such have had no influence on how magazines and other print publishing should be formatted.

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