Intuitive Scriptwriting
Final Draft AV

May, 2002
by David English

Summary: Dual-column scriptwriting program that automatically aligns video and audio elements

Target Users: Scriptwriters

Platform: Windows 95/98/2000/NT/ME; Mac OS 8.6 or later

If you script your own video productions, you probably use a standard word processor and adapt your scripts to fit onto a single-column page. It may not be the best way to get the job done, but it’s often the most convenient—if for no other reason than you already have a word processor.
There is a better way. Final Draft, the company that developed the popular screenwriting program of the same name, has created a spin-off—a dual-column scripting program designed especially for AV producers. Targeted at advertising, training films, corporate videos, corporate presentations, and documentaries, Final Draft AV ($249) supports several kinds of script templates, yet it’s flexible enough to adjust to a producer’s individual needs.
If you want a lesson in frustration, try writing a multi-column script with a standard word processor. The easy part is creating a page with separate video and audio columns; the hard part is figuring out how to align the video and audio elements. With Final Draft AV, you can add text to a video description, and the matching audio elements will automatically line up. You don’t have to retype, rearrange or manually repaginate just to make a change.

Lay of the Land
While there’s no universally accepted format for writing dual-column scripts, the developers examined dozens of scripts in order to find common elements. As a result, the program offers three basic layouts: AV, Radio and Linear. It also has preference screens that let you change the appearance of each layout.

The AV layout is the traditional dual-column format with the video elements on the left side and the audio elements on the right side. It features four types of elements: a video description element for the video column, and character, dialogue and parenthetical elements for the audio column. The Radio layout eliminates the video column and its video-description element, but keeps the audio column and its three audio elements. The Linear layout keeps all four elements from the AV layout, but positions the elements horizontally across the page within a single column. Its open format makes it more adaptable to a variety of production styles.

With Final Draft AV, it’s easy to add script elements. In the audio column, a character element always precedes a dialogue element. Pressing the Enter key (for Windows) or the Return key (for Mac OS) adds a new video description element in the video column and alternates between character and dialogue elements in the audio column. If you want to add a carriage return (instead of a new element), press the Shift and Enter keys (for Windows) or the Shift and Return keys (for Mac). Press Enter (or Return) twice to create a parenthetical element, and the parentheses are added automatically. To have audio without video, simply leave a blank video description. To create a new scene, place the cursor in the next box in the video column and start typing. While the program controls take some getting used to, they’re part of a sophisticated system for managing scripts.

Navigation is equally straightforward. The Tab key toggles among the video description elements in the video column and the character and dialog elements in the audio column. Use the Backspace key (Windows) or Delete key (Mac) to join an element with a preceding element. Various combinations of the Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, Shift, Ctrl and cursor keys let you move within the document or select portions of the text. Of course, you don’t have to use the keyboard shortcuts to navigate your script, but if you use the program regularly, they can save you a lot of time.
Each script has a simple header for your company name and a detailed header for project-specific information, such as agency, client, project name, job number, writer, producer, director and art director. You can add or delete header fields to suit your type of production. The current version doesn’t allow graphics in the header, so you won’t be able to include your corporate logo. A single-line footer is also provided.

You can select whether to show the header on each page, whether to show boxes around each scene and whether to show the video and audio labels for the columns. Unfortunately, you can’t customize the labels. One especially handy feature: You can shift the contents of each page to accommodate a three-hole punch. Even though the holes are shown on screen, they’re not printed.

Tools of the Trade
The program automatically takes care of maintaining clean page breaks. It won’t divide an element across two pages. When the script overflows a page boundary, the entire element is moved to the top of the next page. Other useful features include a 120,000-word spelling checker and thesaurus, as well as the ability to import scripts from word processors. You do have to follow strict formatting guidelines for any scripts you import, but if done properly, you can bring in pre-existing scripts and have the text neatly sorted into the appropriate columns and elements.

Final Draft AV is an impressive scriptwriting application. While you can’t control all of its display features—such as the font, position and wording of the column labels—the program is adaptable enough to work with most projects. Its ability to align the contents of the video and audio columns makes it far preferable to a word processor, and its professional-quality headers will make a good impression on your clients. Best of all, the developer plans to improve the program. A future version will let you define your own layouts.