Customer Reviews

Final Draft 6 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The use of a script formatting programme such as Final Draft 6.0 is a bit of an indulgence if you simply want to generate a decent looking piece of work. Setting up a Word template and a set of paragraph styles will do the job very adequately. Beats a Selectric anyway.

What Final Draft 6.0 is all about, is the automatic adjustment of a script's format so that when re-writes or revisions are made, the document will be appropriately modified.

For example, working with a Word template and you have included the (more) and Joe Blow ( continued) tags, to get the dialogue across a page-break, these will remain in place even if they are not required after an edit or an addition or a rearrangement of scenes. Final Draft 6.0 will delete or include these tags as you proceed. And with line spacings kept as they should be.

Final Draft 6.0's other big feature is its analysis capability. So if Harlan Ellison and Bll Shatner had been running this application when Bill was reading through `The City on the Edge of Forever' script at Harlan's house, Bill could have, with a click or two of the mouse, discovered how many lines that he and Leonard Nimoy had between them and saved a lot of reading and mental arithmetic time. Which is what Final Draft is all about for the serious or professional writer. The saving of time when you need to know what,where, and how much of, a script contains, and the avoidance of a lot of tiresome manual tweaking.

At its most basic, Final Draft, will dispense with the need for a multitude of keystrokes in a word processor, since mostly the tab and enter keys are used. Most of these formatters use this approach in one way or another.

A file can be saved as an RTF ( rich text format ) for delivery to those not running Final Draft, and you can also export a script to PDF for peace of mind, if you want others to see and print the script as you do. Another useful feature is the ability to take text created in a Word template and copy and paste it into Final Draft for it to apply the correct text styles to the, scene-heading, dialogue, parenthetical, and action sections, etc. This means that you don't have to worry about re-doing your pre-Final Draft scripts in Final Draft.

There are cheaper options to Final Draft 6.0, but I have found them to be either lacking in features or simply confusing and awkward to use. More time being wasted getting one's head around their idiosyncrasies, than doing anything useful.

The documentation for Final Draft 6.0 is the best of all the options that I've seen and they have even gone to the bother of creating their own font - Courier Final Draft. This font is different to Courier New 12 Pt in Word, etc. At high zoom levels, on screen, it looks good and beefy, not thin and weedy like Courier New 12 Pt . It also prints much more strongly making your script more easily readable. It's a fair simulation of a type written page. Other fonts can be substituted, but it's highly recommended that you stick to Courier to be consistent with expectations. Courier Final Draft also looks pretty much the same on PCs and Macs.

Final Draft 6.0 won't write you a better script, but it will allow you to keep your mind on the job.

Even though it remains the Hollywood standard, Final Draft 6 leaves a lot to be desired. For lack of a decent alternative, I've used this application for the better part of a decade, and it remains clumsy to use and well behind the curve of technology.

The big issue: Onscreen text looks atrocious. After a year on the market, Final Draft 6 still doesn't use Mac OS X's technology to render beautiful anti-aliased text. Third-party fixes, like Silk, work only halfway to solve Final Draft's shortcomings. But should an application that costs $ need fixing at all? Unacceptable.

And beware of WYSIWYDG, or "What You See Is What You Don't Get." You might find the perfect font in the Font Menu, but good luck applying it to your screenplay. Worse, there are occasional text hiccups, where the text-rendering is garbled and screen redrawing is skewed.

'Authorization' remains a nuisance, too. (Bet you didn't remember to 'deauthorize'before a system reinstall or upgrade.) I know of no other software that requires such an unwieldy process just to stay running smoothly.

Final Draft 6 is still better than a typewriter or a standard word processor for writing scripts, but not by much. Considering the steep price, maybe it's time to revisit the competition.

Please note that this is advertised as being ok for win 95 platform; all the literature for loading/install plugged this at win 98 and above only.

I still haven't been able to enable the text-to-speech option, despite having re-installed the package several times on my laptop. But this is fairly minor and will no-doubt be solved once I contact their support people (or poke around their web site).

Surprisingly, the whole package doesn't take-up much space either. And my laptop is old (max 1.5G), so that's a consideration.

The package itself is very reminiscent of MS Word. The philosophy behind the design of this tool is to minimize keystrokes... to that end, you get-by simply by using the Tab and Enter keys (in a Win environment anyway) to let it know what it is you want to do.

Thereafter, you use the keyboard to outline your action, dialogue etc. It is clever enough to remember character names (so, as you begin to type someone's name, it makes a suggestion as to who it may be or provides a list from which you're invited to make a selection); ditto with the locations of a scene.

The package even boasts reports & stats surrounding your script... it'll therefore tell you that character X only occupies Y% of the dialogue and that's always in one of the following locations while interacting with another character Z.

You can tile your scenes across the screen (as though they were written on cards) and move the cards around (and, if dealing with a final Production script, re-number the scenes and so-on too).

Easy to learn, easy to use. You can do all of it yourself with the right templates in something like MS Word, but the cost is well-worth the time it saves and the speedy manner in which it captures your creativity (instead of stifling it by tedious formatting considerations you have to remember).

I have no experience of using a Mac, so can't comment on this exact same package being used on that platform.

Buyer beware: Final Draft incorporates an archaic copy protection scheme that will drive you nuts. Every other category of computer software did away with this kind of user-unfriendly copy protection scheme in the mid-80s, but the screenwriting software vendors persist. You're probably better off using Microsoft Word (which is far more robust) and using a simple formatting utility when you're project is finished. If you have any hard drive crashes or hardware upgrades and you forget to de-install Final Draft you will lose your install keys. Tech support is scarce and the online help system is only good for the most basic information. While it should make your life simpler this product will make your life hell. Avoid it like the plague.

This was a real disappointment. I've had version 5 for some time and liked it a lot. When I was offered a special deal on an upgrade to 6 I figured, why not. Now I'm sorry I went for the upgrade.

I use a G3 PowerBook with Mac OS 9.1 and more than 300 MB of RAM. Final Draft 6 -- particularly the print preview -- is quite a bit slower than version 5. I also don't like the new interface, which is "carbonized" to look like Mac OS X, as much as the clean, Word-like interface of version 5.

That said, Final Draft 6 has pretty much the same features as version 5, although you can now save a script in PDF format.

In short, if you're happy with Final Draft 5 I wouldn't bother with the upgrade.

You might also try Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000. It's a very nice, customizable program that's easy to use. In fact, I find that I'm using MM 2000 over either version of Final Draft.

Update: I just upgraded to Mac OS X 10.2 and Final Draft 6.0 works much better than it did with 9.1. Excellent product.

Final Draft has created the perfect word processor for constructing scripts. The interface is clean and straightforward. To the beginner it can be used quite effectively after the brief tutorial; for the expert it offers unlimited customization.

Quibbles? None really except that you have to 'authorize' the program to use it without having the CD in the drive. Therefore if you write on two computers you will either have to have two copies of Final Draft or put up with having to insert the program CD into the drive of the unauthorized computer.

All in all Final Draft 6.0 is an excellent program and well worth the money.

I am a screenwriter who is proficient with Microsoft Word. I put off buying Final Draft because I thought with the macros I'd created in Word, this product could not be much better than what I was already using. I WAS WRONG!! This program GREATLY simplifies screenwriting and is INCREDIBLY easy to use.

The program is also able to convert screenplays written in Microsoft Word into Final Draft documents, and does so with a minimum of errors. My hard spaces in Word were inconsistently converted to question marks; some of the scene headings in the Word document were mistaken for character headings in Final Draft - both easily fixed. (However, Final Draft documents are not easily converted back to Word, as the formatting is lost.)

Final Draft is also able to save documents in pdf format. However, one cannot simply click on the document and have Adobe Reader open it. Instead, one must open Adobe Reader, and then open the document through that.

In spite of its minor faults, this is a TERRIFIC, easy to learn and operate program!

Writing a screenplay can be a very daunting task, especially for someone who is not familiar with the format. Before purchasing Final Draft, my previous screenplays were written in your basic, custom-formated Microsoft Word document.

Final Draft 6 does it all the formating for you. A function called "SmartType" finishes off character names for you, so you don't have to keep typing in names. This is wonderful when you have two or three characters talking to each other in a string, so you can quickly type the conversation, as if it were going on in front of you.

When I transferred my previous screenplays into Final Draft, it took about an hour or so to reformat a 106-page document correctly. Final Draft was able to interperate about 80% of the formatting correctly, getting confused on mostly transitions and telling the difference between some scene headings and actions. Although, it knew exactly what was dialogue just by where it was placed in the word document, which I thought was remarkable.

Some of the templates for actual T.V. shows are a little silly, but they serve their purpose: giving you the raw format for a certain show, which can vary greatly depending on the series. If you have your own show you've created, you can save a blank document with the initial beginings of the script as a template and be able to have a fresh document ready for your next episode.

Final Draft is a great purchase for the novice screen writer learning the format, and a wonderful time-saver for the somewhat-established to established veteran.

As we all know, screenplays require a specific, yet quirky format. The other day, I saw a gentleman at Starbucks with his laptop putting the final touches on his screenplay. He said it took him six months to write, the main culprit being the formatting for the long duration. It turns out he was using Microsoft Word to write this thing. I could see the smoke coming out of his ears when I showed him Final Draft.

I've written three screenplays since purchasing the product. It is formatted to the industry standard, and guarantees your work won't be rejected for improper formatting.

Another cool feature I've taken advantage of is some television show script templates. It's very helpful if you've never written a script for TV.

It may not be perfect, but it is clearly the best out there.

I use an APPLE so I can't say about "PC." But I lost 5 months work because of a "bug" in Final Draft 6. I wrote the script for their competition and cannot enter b/c of buying their software. Ironic! I looked to "FD" for help but they wouldn't.. I just got emails and more emails... your message "did not process." The person at "FD" didn't even understand my questions? I got emails that my email address had changed (Nope). And to talk with someone even when its an error with their product they charge per minute. According to APPLE and a local service center, it was determined I was right it was a "FD" software problem. And a headache with authorization and deauthorization. I'm shopping on AMAZON for a new product like Movie Magic. As painful as my script loss is b/c of "FD." What hurt more was their ignoring me like I'm an idot and not interested in fixing a bug that could harm all customers. It cost to learn! Oh I did back up- No help, the problem is software and when it went it took all my text! Data recovery found a part of my script so I will rebuild from there-