Shoot Review: Final Draft AV 2.5

Audiovisual scriptwriting software solves nagging problems.

Every now and then a product comes along that works well and eliminates some annoyance or extra work from your daily routine. That's how I would describe Final Draft AV 2.5, the script formatting software from the same people who develop Final Draft, the top-selling script formatter for motion picture and television scripts.

This sequence of screenshots (at right, top to bottom) illustrates how the Re-arrange Guide Line function works in Final Draft AV 2.5. Edit one column, and the other column remains in synch.

Audiovisual scripts used for commercials, documentaries, corporate communications, and broadcast production follow a vertical two-column format. One column is for video description, and the other is for audio description (dialogue, narration, and sound effects). What could be simpler? Lots of things, actually, because as it turns out, this type of format is all but impossible in a word processing program — especially Microsoft Word.
The big gotcha

In a standard word processor, lining up the video column with the audio column is relatively easy, at least until you begin to edit the script. As you add or delete descriptions, shots, or words, the two columns quickly go out of synch. Adding page breaks only makes it worse, and you find it's impossible to make a script presentable quickly after significant changes are added. With a five-page script, you may find you're spending an inordinate amount of time re-arranging everything every time a few lines are added or deleted. If you like to rewrite your scripts or have clients that do, prepare for the worst.

Fortunately, Final Draft AV has Rearrange Guide Line, a simple tool to correct this problem that's basically foolproof. Rearrange Guide Line is a line that crosses both columns and lets you select where to enter new text in either column. The tool ensures that your shots and their corresponding audio descriptions remain in synch. Rearrange Guide Line is completely visual and lets you add new text, delete text, or drag and drop existing shots and dialogue to new locations. Synchronicity between elements is automatically preserved. You can create any new insertion point at the beginning of a shot or a sentence, or in the middle of a sentence, in either the video or audio column.
Flip the script

While Rearrange Guide Line is the main feature that makes Final Draft AV an obvious purchase for AV scriptwriters, the software also has the same kind of formatting features that all scriptwriters expect. These include basic commands for text entry. This can be done with hot keys or in the Toolbar at the top of the screen. There are buttons for Insert Video (shot or scene) and Insert Audio (dialogue, narration, and parentheticals).

This automatically places the selected element in the right place and in the right style. For instance, shot titles are in caps and character names are in caps and underlined. However, you can customize the formatting of these and all other elements in Final Draft AV and save them as a template. Also, a dropdown menu with the same text element categories allows you to select or change a previously entered element. Like the company's movie formatting software, Final Draft AV intelligently flows text from page to page without breaking up shots and scenes.

Another very useful feature is the ability to export Final Draft AV scripts to most teleprompters in Mac or Windows format. This saves a step in the production process and eliminates the errors introduced when teleprompter scripts are retyped.

Final Draft AV can also create PDFs or Rich Text Format documents for use in other word processors, so your scripts can be shared with clients without Final Draft AV. However, the results may not be exactly the same as they are in Final Draft AV, and any editing in this format means out-of-synch video and audio descriptions will begin to emerge.

Final Draft has been innovating in the business of script formatting and writer services for a long time. Many of the useful features from the company's movie formatting product have found their way into Final Draft AV. For example, there is automatic linking to a Writers Guild of America West web site for the script registry service. This is equivalent to copyrighting your work at the Library of Congress. Final Draft is the only scriptwriting software with an authorized agreement with the WGAW online registry service.

As you might expect, a robust spell-checker and thesaurus are available in several languages. The interface is clean and nicely designed. After years of working with writers, Final Draft has settled on an efficient workflow that looks good and is rock-solid. The Mac and Windows versions are completely compatible. Nothing is worse than not being able to share your scripts — especially in corporate production, where scripts are routinely shared with clients and production people.

As enthusiastic as I might sound, Final Draft AV is not without shortcomings. Mainly, there's its inability to incorporate images. For many companies and most ad agencies, the two-column AV script typically has story-board frames in the video column. This is not essential for every script, but the absence of this capability is a deal killer for ad agencies. Agencies live by storyboards — for them they're an even more standard form of communication than an AV script. Final Draft has a partial workaround for the lack of support for images. A new feature in Final Draft AV 2.5 lets you export a script into Apple's Keynote presentation software — essentially, the PowerPoint killer on the Mac. This requires an additional template. Keynote is a good product, but a slideshow is not a substitute for a script.
The final word

Final Draft AV is a full-featured word processor with a column editor that's an absolute must-have for anyone writing AV scripts. I doubt if anyone will need more than an afternoon to learn all the hot keys. Even though I'm one of the people who needs images in many of the projects I'm working on, at the price of Final Draft AV ($178), it's worth the investment even if I use it only a few times a year.

Final Draft is a responsive software company that listens to its users. I have had nothing but positive experiences with the company for more than eight years, and have frequently used the thorough online support and clear documentation with good results. I'm new to Final Draft AV 2.5, but it has already become my standard tool for AV script writing. I highly recommend it.