Customer Reviews

Final Draft 7 Professional Scriptwriting [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

I have never written a review of anything in my life. When Final Draft 7 crashed for the umpteenth time today, I felt compelled to. I am a working screenwriter who has been using Final Draft since version 5. All told, six years. Whatever bug that caused FD6 to randomly crash in OSX HAS NOT been fixed, despite what Final Draft says. At least in Final Draft 7 the crash doesn't render my file "incompatable with this version of Final Draft" -- if any of you out there have had that happen, I deeply pity you, as you understand what it's like to be that maze-bound rat that randomly receives electric shocks.

Throw in the fact that this product is edging toward $250.00 (nearly as much as digital video editing programs), the fact that customer support costs $2.00 a minute -- you heard me right, $2.00 a minute to ask them ANYTHING, no matter how small -- and you get a clear impression of a company that peddles severely inferior software becuase they know they have the market locked. This is, however, NOT THE CASE. 25% of people that use screenwriting apps DO NOT USE FINAL DRAFT, becuase there are vastly superior programs out there. As of today, I am a proud member of the 25%.

Thanks to easy .pdf file conversion, anyone can use any screenwriting app they like.

Those that for some reason do decide to purchase this product, I implore you to change your preferences so you auto-save every five minutes, as this is the only way you won't lose a day's work, a week's work -- or God forbid, if don't back up your files -- an entire script.

I have been researching several products for screenwriting. I am a beginner. I do not recommend Hollywood Screenwriter due to restrictions: must have cd in drive to use, incompatible with some cut/paste features, etc.

I read the for's and against's on here and other sites; it was terribly difficult to figure out what to purchase. I want the best for my money.

I did download both Movie Magic Screen Writer and Final Draft. For my work, I found that Movie Magic had too many values to work with in it's software. Although, I enjoyed the "windows" appearance and its reports, I found that the thesaurus was limited. The names list works well.

In Final Draft, it has an exceptional thesaurus, but it has a name list that works off of letters you enter vs. Movie Magic which provides a visible name list (a little easier to use).

Both seem to work almost identically in their format method. I did prefer the side bar in Movie Magic to enter or tab "dialouge," "transition," etc. Final Draft does do a find job of handling it and the "mores and continueds" work accordingly.

OVERALL, I came to the same conclusion that one rater has come to. You have to find which software works for you. They are both good.

I chose Final Draft and bought it from J&R Music because its interface is simple, it's easy on my eyes and the cost was relative. There's little clutter. I want to focus on my script and not the drop down with 9 or 10 items on it (yes, FD has one like that too).

To make either product out as a "bad" choice is silly. The developers of those products are math folks working to bring a screenwriting program for liberal arts folks into the market and make it functional.

That's a difficult chore, but I think they did a good job. My choice was Final Draft, because it's no nonsense, straight forward and functional.

Hopefully, some of these details helped you and best wishes getting your script out!

Final Draft 7 is a nice piece of software. It is easy to use and it has a number of nice features (my favorite: assigning voices to characters and listening to the program read your script). This application really streamlines the process of writing a script, which is nice. You don't need to worry about wasting time formating. It's all automated.

Now to the bad stuff. This program is riddled with bugs. It crashes very frequently. I can't tell you how annoying it is to be intensely involved with your work only to have Final Draft crash on you, destroying pages of unsaved work. If you get this program then you will find yourself in the habit of pressing ctrl+S (save) every few lines.

Overall, Final Draft 7 is a useful, but flawed program. There's no denying its ease of use in crafting screenplays, but it can also be a major headache when it crashes.

First, I have never had problems with the kinds of bugs reported here. The patches make things only better, but when I read the kinds of fixes the patches address, I can say that I have not seen most, if any, of them.

Second, the fact that I'm pro-Final Draft 7 does not make me anti-Movie Magic Screenwriter. In fact, I've agonized about buying both programs, just to be covered. I have sampled the MMS demo, and what I don't like about it is that the interface is a far cry from the MS Word style that is claimed. Final Draft 7 mirrors the Windows XP interface, and when the you've set the font display to maximum resolution, it looks beautiful.

Third, Final Draft 7 makes the art of screenplay writing addictive (not that MMS doesn't). As you get yourself immersed in the process, you can find it hard to pull yourself away.

Fourth, Final Draft offers a special pricing policy for military customers (of course, I can use the MMS competitive upgrade policy and save even more). I contacted Write Brothers both by phone and e-mail about a military pricing policy, and received conflicting information. By e-mail, I was told that they have a military pricing policy. Why they don't publicize this on their web site is beyond me. When I called them, however, I was told that no such pricing policy exists, and that if I was looking to save money, I should try Amazon or other sites.

Personally, I love Final Draft. I'm looking for a reason to also add MMS to my software suite, but I haven't seen enough reasons (yet) to take the plunge.

I've been using Final Draft for a number of years now, back to version 4.X, and always liked it. Version 6 has been a real winner, with a few annoying quirks. When given an opportunity to upgrade to version 7, I thought, "Great, I'll do it." I'm sorry I did. FD7 may turn out to be a good update to a good program, but as it is now it shouldn't have been released. Just a couple examples -- when I switch to the index card view, I get a screen full of blank index cards, even though I'm many pages into my script. What gives? It's much less convenient to access Scene Navigator and Index Cards in FD7, and as another reviewer wrote, the Go To function doesn't work properly. What a disappointment. So now I'm back to using FD6, which is so much better. I'll be on the lookout for updates that might make FD7 at least usable, but until then I'll stick with FD6. You should do the same.

I've been using Final Draft since version 6, and I will say I am happy with the changes they made to 7.
The controls are very intuitive. I actually spend more of my time going from rough draft to first draft paring down the dialogue because it really is so simple to enter. The auto-complete function coupled with the ability to quickly enter two person dialogue (simply hitting tab will set up a new character's dialogue line,) really does save an incredible amount of time.

The notecard function helps me a great deal during the beginning stages of writing a script. Script ideas can quickly and easily be jotted down and saved. It saves me a lot of desk space which was before saved for countless Post-Its.

The script reading function is a neat little added function. It isn't a substitute for having live actors read through it, but being able to hear the words out loud does come in handy.

Earlier versions of FD7 were a bit buggy, but the latest version build does seem to run a lot smoother.

There's an option for stageplays but, to be honest, I'd stick with a regular word processor. It takes WAY too much time to correct the default formating to make it worth your while.

I am still quite frustrated with the activation/deactivation convention Final Draft has decided to use.
When you purchase a software license, you are allowed to activate Final Draft on 2 computers. I only used one and was going on my merry way when the hard drive crashed. I, mistakenly it turns out, went ahead and just used the second activation.
The hard drive is older, so it does give me problems sometimes. When the PC crashed again, I had to call customer support and have them release the customer number so I could reactivate my license.
I needed to do it again just recently, and was lectured on the phone by person at tech support about how he could only give me one more "freebie," and that next time he would have to charge me $99. I'm sorry, but buying version 6 and then upgrading to version 7 cost me over $300. Being able to login to an account and freeing up activations needs to be implemented.

All in all, this is a very good program for what it's built to do: write screenplays. Playwrights would be better advised to stick with their run of the mill word processor.

Okay, for starters, I've been writing scripts professionally for years... for Warners, Paramount, ABC, CBS, etc.. and for myself.

THE PROS:
1) It's THE industry standard. You can send Final Draft files to any studio, no problem. Everybody uses it.
2) It's easy to jump between slug lines, action, dialog, etc.
3) Keeping track of revisions is simple and works.

THE CONS:
1) Buggy as hell. In fact, its embarrassingly buggy and the company hasn't fix the bugs IN YEARS!!! Guess when you dominate an industry, why waste money on making the product work as advertised. This policy worked wonders for the American auto industry, didn't it.
2) If you have a problem with their bugs, call the company and they charge you $2 per minute to solve their software screw ups.
3) Their "collabowriter" feature. Hah. I've known countless writers over the years in Hollywood. Never met a writer who got that to work.
4) No updates in years!
5) Oh, did I mention buggy?
6) Notes feature is super basic. Barely useable.

Read the negative feedback on this site, so I attempted to use Word (again) for all of my script formatting. It looked horrible, so I decided to give FD7 a try, regardless of the reviews. Typed the entire script, made revisions, tracked changes, made more revisions...
The program worked great, and the script looks better than anything I would have had the patience to create in Word.
Maybe they have fixed all of the initial problems (that I read about on this site), but I think it is an excellent program. I recommend it to anyone, who, like me, likes to write and hates worrying about where he/she has placed the "more" and "continued" on the page, or how the margin on my dialogue centers.

I have to work every day with FD 7 (Mac OSX) as the production company I write for asked me to do so. To cut it short: I have never ever seen a programme with so many bugs and crashes! Unfortunately recent updates have not changed anything. :-(

I am a short story writer that is now trying to write scripts. After reading a number of scripts, I was very concerned that I would have to go through all kinds of hoops to keep the formatting and pagination. In fact, I put off starting a script because I was so worried about it. My friends recommended Final Draft. As soon as I sat down and installed it, I realized I had nothing to worry about. I was able to start expressing my ideas quickly and easily. Now all I have to do is finish a script and sell it!