Final Draft 7.1.3
By Mike Hubbartt, Copyright ©2007
Final Draft $229 USD Contact resellers for sales outside US – see Final Draft’s website for a list. System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later; Universal binary (PPC G3, G4 and G5); 256 MB RAM; 50 MB Hard Drive Space; CD-ROM/DVD-ROM. |
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Strengths: Mature, industry-standard product, support for multiple writer collaboration efforts, save content as PDF. Weaknesses: none found. For a demo of this product: Demo download page |
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Years ago, a couple of my favorite television series were cancelled by the networks. I was disappointed, because I cared what happened to the characters in these shows and wanted to know how the stories ended. I bought whatever fiction and nonfiction books were available for the series, but there weren’t enough books to tell me what finally happened to the characters and I wanted to know. I decided to try to write scripts to conclude my favorite shows, so I bought a few books on writing scripts and found the topic fascinating.
I was unaware how much economics affects a show. You see, the budget for a weekly series may seem like a lot, but television series and movies are a collaborative effort. Many people are involved with each show: the Producer, Director, cast and crew are important, and each person receives a paycheck. Costs beside salaries include sets, film, and special effects also come out of the budget, so these items influence what scripts are produced.
No matter how good idea for a script – television series or movie – it won’t see the light of day if it costs too much to produce. Yes, production costs influence what we see on television or at the movie theater. Regular television series have a number of stock sets that are easier (and less expensive) to use than constructing new sets, so a writer needs to know which stock sets are available for an episode, and how new sets affect the bottom line.
Another item that affects how a script is written is the characters. For weekly series, regular cast members need to appear in most episodes, so the writer must include them in one or more scenes of the main or secondary story plots. And the dialogue for each cast member needs to be tailored for that individual – key words or phrases each actor uses helps viewers identify that character.
As you see, you have to know a lot more than how to type to write a script. But speaking of typing, you need to know how to format a script to have a chance at having it read by an agent or a studio. Some writers use a word processor template that has styles to format the content, but that means you must be constantly conscious of material format as you write. I used MS Word to write my first script, but felt that format concerns somewhat interfered with the creative process. When I bought and started using ScriptWare, I loved how I could keep my hands on the keyboard and use a few key combinations to switch between different script elements (action, dialogue, transitions, etc).
Recently I reviewed Montage 1.0, a new Mac-only script package from Mariner Software that was good, but not as polished as more mature products. This brought me to Final Draft, considered by many as the flagship product of the script writing industry.
Getting Started
After installing the software, you have several options to create a new script: choose a new blank script or create a blank script based on a number of templates included with the product. There are templates for:
Scripts |
Text Documents |
TV Templates |
BBC Screenplay for TV BBC Screenplay BBC Taped Sitcom BBC Three-camera Show Broadway Musical Half-Hour Sitcom One Hour TV Drama Screenplay (Cole and Haag) Screenplay (Warner Brothers) Screenplay Stageplay 1 Stageplay 2 US Screenplay (French) US Screenplay (German) US Screenplay (Spanish) |
Manuscript Novel Outline Query Letter Text Document Treatment |
24, According to Jim, Alias, Arrested Development, Becker, Bernie Mac Show, Bones, Boston Legal, Casualty, Cold Case, Commander in Chief, Coronation Street, Courting Alex, Crossing Jordan, CSI Miami, CSI NY, CSI, Days of Our Lives, Deadwood, Desperate Housewives, Doctors, Eastenders, Emmerdale, Entourage, ER, Everwood, Everyone Loves Raymond, Family Affairs, Family Guy, Fraiser, Friends, Futurama, General Hospital, George Lopez, Ghost Whisperer, Gilmore Girls, Greys Anatomy, Guiding Light, Holby City, House, How I Met Your Mother, ITV, King of Queens, King of the Hill, Las Vegas, Law and Order CI, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order, Lost, Mad TV, Malcolm in the Middle, McLeod’s Daughters, Medium, Monk, My Name is Earl, NCIS, Nip/Tuck, Numb3rs, One Tree Hill, Prison Break, Scrubs, Sex in the City, Six Feet Under, Smallville, South Park, Stacked, That 70s Show,The Bill, The L Word, The OC,The Office, The Shield, The Simpsons,The Sopranos, The West Wing,The Wire, The X Files, The Young and the Restless, Two and a Half Men, Will and Grace, Without a Trace |
Final Draft does not include a TV template for Babylon 5, so I used a new ‘One Hour TV Drama’ script to test this product. The screen to enter a script is similar to a typical word processor, but one thing stands out. The text is formatted like a Hollywood script, so you see how your work of art will appear.
After creating my new script, I entered the series name, episode name and TEASER at the top, and began with FADE IN. I entered the scene heading, followed by the action, and entered the character. New characters are automatically added to a list, which displays when you start to enter a dialogue or action for a character. After entering the character name, I pressed the enter key once to move to the next line to enter dialogue, or press enter a second time to choose the element to use. The types of elements are: General, Scene Heading, Action, Character, Parenthetical, Dialogue, Transition, Shot, New Act, End of Act, Teaser/Act and Show/Ep. Title. It was easy to switch between different script elements (action, dialogue, transitions, etc), although not quite as simple as it is with ScriptWare.
The first book I read about script writing advised using index cards to list each scene to help organize and rearrange the scenes. I used paper index cards when I first started writing my scripts, as they did help keep things organized. After writing part of my test Babylon 5 episode, I switched to the Index Card views – Summary and Script – to see the story laid out using on-screen index cards. Very nice. I could drag and drop the scene index cards onscreen, which rearranged the material in the script. Easy. I like that I can compare and rearrange my work to more closely match Joe Straczynski’s own scripts, using his scripts in various volumes of The Scripts of JMS published by CaféPress.
Note: If you want to see scripts from a television series, JMS’ books at CaféPress are a good purchase. For older television and movie scripts, some people order them from Script City in California. I enjoy reading scripts, but not everyone feels that way…
Two features professional writers will appreciate in Final Draft are writer collaboration
support and reports. Selecting the Collabowriter menu item lets a writer join or host a collaboration session over the Internet. To join, enter the IP address, screen name for the session, and port number. To host a session, just enter your screen name and port number. The reports available in Final Draft include Scenes, Locations, Characters, Cast, Script, ScriptNote, and Statistics. Valuable data when keeping production costs in mind.
A Professional’s Comments about Final Draft
“Final Draft makes it possible to simply imagine the movie in script form. If you can think in cinematic terms, you can write in the terms of cinema.”
Tom Hanks – Writer / Director / Producer / Actor / Academy Award™ Winner
Cast Away, Forrest Gump, Philadelphia, Saving Private Ryan, That Thing You Do...
This quote was on Final Draft’s website when I was researching this article. How can you beat having someone with Tom Hanks’ credentials endorse your product?
Conclusion: It takes a little time to get comfortable switching between elements, but it is time well spent. This product provides word processing functionality as well as scriptwriting. There are a lot of TV templates, and the types of scripts that are available for series without a template are more than adequate for the needs of most writers. I appreciate the ability to save content as a Final Draft file or as PDF – PDFs are so convenient to email, and the recipient does not need a copy of Final Draft to read your script. I liked the user manual and the free issue of Script magazine in the box.
The previous release (7.0) had a number of troublesome bugs reported in other reviews of this product – I did not encounter them during my tests and was satisfied the newest version of Final Draft works well.
Recommendation: Although I own other screenwriting programs, I will continue to use Final Draft. If you enjoy writing fiction – short stories or novels – and considered trying your hand at screenwriting, look at this reasonably priced software. Definitely a good buy and recommended.
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