Final Draft AV: A First Look
Documentary Scripting's Latest Tool

Sept. 2001
by Barry Clark

Nonfiction writers, including those who write radio and TV commercials, informational videos, and nonfiction TV programs, tend to work in Word Perfect or Microsoft Word, using the tables feature of these generic word processors to compose two- or three-column audio-video scripts. After devoting a half hour or so to the chore of creating a customized script template, it is easy to compose AV scripts with these programs, taking advantage of such familiar features as automatic scene numbering and, in the case of Word Perfect, a built-in dictionary/thesaurus and the standby Reveal Codes command.

However, for those unprepared to invest the effort to format their own AV templates, help is available in the form of specialized scriptwriting programs, including MovieMagic Screenwriter 2000, Scriptware V.3 for Windows, Script Wizard for Office 97, SidebySide for Microsoft Word, and now Final Draft AV 1.1 for Windows and Mac, said to be the only word processor specifically designed for dual-column scriptwriting.

Though I have had no experience with the first five programs, I recently had the opportunity to field test the new AV software from Final Draft, a firm whose Professional Screenwriting Software, introduced in 1991 and now in version 5, is admired by many fiction film writers. If you're willing to spend $249 plus shipping and handling (visit finaldraft.com for referral to dealers), you will get a foolproof system for creating two-column scripts, with a built-in thesaurus and user-defined dictionary, easy import and export between Windows and Mac, and most of the features you would find on a word processing program with a few notable exceptions: Though upgrades are in the works, as of this writing you can't automatically number your scenes, import text boxes, storyboards, or comments into your scripts or indent text in the columns. In addition, to customize the width of the columns, you must adjust the left and right indent options, available under Video Description and Dialogue in the "Elements" pull-down menu. And, to include time-code cues or scene duration data in your script, you will want to dedicate the "Character" and "Parenthetical" features to these uses. You will also be unable to delete the horizontal borders at the top and bottom of each page or to display row and column borders as unobtrusive guidelines, a useful feature of the tables format in Word Perfect or Microsoft Word. As nonfiction writers know, and as the developers of Final Draft AV have discovered, the formats for audio-video scripts are far more varied in form and far more complex in structure than those commonly used for fiction scripts and, beyond the well-worn convention of assigning video to the left column and audio to the right, virtually no format conventions apply. Under the circumstances, Final Draft AV 1.1 does an admirable job of attempting to meet every need. And for those who don't find what they want, upgrades to new versions will, at least in the short run, be available free to those who sign on with version 1.1.
Barry Clark can be reached at barryclark@mandalaymedia.net .