Final Draft Brings Hollywood Street Credibility to AV Screenwriting Software for the Corporate and Advertising World

We are all here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.' W.H. Auden

What do corporate industrial producers, radio and television copywriters, speechwriters and documentary filmmakers all over the world have in common? Their days of juggling double-column scripts are about to end. Final Draft, one of Hollywood's leading screenplay software developers just released FD AV, an audio/video scriptwriting program.

There are maybe a million screenwriters out there working to churn out the next prequel, sequel and sitcom to 'Dude, Where's My Car?' But everyday and everywhere else, there are literally a bazillion commercials and industrials being made. Okay, perhaps I overstate my stats; maybe it's only a kajillion. So, why hadn't anybody come up with software for these people before? The reason is because the multi-column, side-by-side industrial scriptwriting format is a royal pain.

The side-by-side format evolved at the dawn of talking movies when companies began sponsoring their own training and marketing films. They were known as industrials. When Television came into America's living rooms, so did TV commercials. Both industries cobbled out similar formats where the pictures (then called 'visuals' - now called 'video') are on one side of the page and the sound (then, as now, called 'audio') on the other side. Usually (but not always), the visuals are described in lower case. The audio is always in CAPS.
Today's evolved word processors like Microsoft Word and WordPerfect can handle the relatively simple chores of the multi-column format by using tables. Aw, but no, grasshoppers.

Invariably, the audio portion will exceed the video in length and the tables break in odd places. Usually (but not always), this happens in the middle of a sentence. The beauty of using a word processing program is that most clients usually (but not always) have one. You and your client can send changes, updates and approvals back and forth via email. But, the downside comes when you try to lockdown the A to the V in the shooting script. As it has often been said in corporate video making, 'the scriptwriting is harder than the producing.'

Final Draft comes from the streets of Hollywood where the rigid rules of screenplay formatting are tighter than a movie star's face-lift. The folks at Final Draft are now masters of the art of marrying the bride of script format to the beast of film production. The first thing you should know about their new FD AV is that the Audio stays with the Visual like ketchup on a French fry no matter how many last minute insertions you have to make. Those of you who know exactly what I'm talking about are now popping champagne and throwing away your giant size bottles of Excedrin. Gone is the constant, do-it-yourself, manual-repagination. Gone is the constant search for the rest of the video or last line of audio. Gone is the re-matching visual to audio. FD AV automatically does all this for you.

But wait, grasshoppers - like the Ronco TV announcer says, 'There's more...'

As more often than not you are working on either multi-projects for one client or working for a plethora of clients, headers and footers become an absolute necessity. Headers, in particular, need to contain the vital production info like: Client Name, Project Title, Job Number and Revision Draft, etc. The big difference between your current word processor and FD AV is that Final Draft has been in the trenches of big time, heavy-duty, motion picture filmmaking. Their software has been stranded on the beach in 'Cast Away', toured the jungles of Viet Nam in 'Platoon' and ridden on killer meteors in 'Armageddon.' In a way, you can say they've been through DeMille. You would think, with all this experience, they know from production.
FD AV is also cross compatible with most standard word processing programs, in both PC and Mac. Not only can you export FD AV into another program, you can also import any two-column script into FD AV. This comes in handy when your client gives you a final approved script, you can then lock down your scenes and start handing it out to your cast and crew in FD AV. Usually (which is always), you or your client has last minute revisions. No problem, FD AV can insert the update without breaking into a sweat. And you can customize your script pages and headers to be displayed with or without lines, boxes, separators or labels.
And for you radio people, FD AV also includes a format for radio commercials, which puts the character and dialogue in two separate columns as well.

Remember, you heard it here first. If you write, direct or produce TV commercials, corporate videos, documentaries, music videos, radio spots, news, infomercials, speeches, corporate presentations (like PowerPoint) and even video games...this is the scriptwriting software you've been searching for.

About Sam Scribner : Sam Scribner was a screenwriter with two feature film credits including 'Delta Heat' and 'The Criminal Mind,' and the author of a screenwriting book called, 'I Can Write a Better Movie Than That!'