Scriptwriting Software - Text 1
The art of telling a story requires more than know-how and technique alone; it also, quite evidently, requires tools and technology. For a long time these tools remained those of writing and printing – the stylus, reed pen, quill and printing press – as did the supports used – stone, metal, clay, papyrus, parchment, paper. These tools, like any tool, may appear neutral, as merely the means for inscribing, preserving and transmitting stories. But a tool has an impact on the material, and the medium an effect on the message – as well as on one’s interlocutors.
Friedrich Kittler demonstrated convincingly that new recording technologies, the gramophone and the cinema, would soon break up the monopoly of writing and printing in the storage and transmission of data. The typewriter, which appeared at the same time, would push writing’s standardization, mechanization and automation even further.[1] It would become the principal tool of those whose profession was writing: journalists, authors and scriptwriters. In most films whose focus is a scriptwriter character, such as Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950), The Player (Altman, 1992), Barton Fink (Joel and Ethan Cohen, 1991), Adaptation (Jonze, 2002) and Trumbo (Roach, 2015), the typewriter is even seen as the emblem of the profession.
The development of electricity, electronics and then information technology would mitigate the media differences between text, image and sound by imposing a new universal medium which could translate, store and transmit all kinds of data in the form of signals and bits. The typewriter would soon be replaced by the computer. The word processing software on this new tool, such as WordPerfect (Corel, 1979) and Word (Microsoft, 1983), made it possible not only to enter text on a keyboard to transform letters into printing characters, the way the typewriter did, but also to modify text in real time, to format it and lay it out on the page automatically, and then to print it or transmit it.
A few companies quickly developed specialized scriptwriting software. Scriptor, developed in the 1980s by Stephen Greenfield and Chris Huntley and their company Screenplay Systems (today Write Brothers), was one of the first programs of its kind (and would win “Technical Achievement Award” at the 1994 Academy Awards). This software, however, only made it possible to format a text already written with regular word processing software. At the same time, Ken Shafer developed ScriptThing, which formatted the text automatically while writing. This software was then acquired and developed by Screenplay Systems and would become an important brand of scriptwriting software known as Movie Magic Screenwriter.
Nevertheless, the most influential software is incontestably Final Draft. Developed in the 1990s by Marc Madnick and Ben Cahan, today it is used by most professional scriptwriters working in cinema and television.
At first, Final Draft was mainly a formatting tool. It made it possible to format automatically while writing the various parts of a script – scene titles, stage directions, characters’ names, asides, dialogue – simply by hitting Enter and, if applicable, selecting the relevant category in the drop down menu that opened. The formatting was automatic, the writing fluid, and the scriptwriter could concentrate on matters of content and style.
As it has been updated, Final Draft has added new functions. Apart from the usual word processing tools (automatic formatting, spell check and dictionary, dictation, tracking changes and document comparison, annotation, split screen, exporting into different formats, etc.), it offers several script templates (for film and television, sitcoms and dramatic series, but also for theatre, musical comedies, novels and the graphic novel, etc., according to different models: British, American…). It also includes a database of character names, a tool for online collaboration (which enables one or more additional scriptwriters to work simultaneously on the same script remotely in real time), production reports (on the scenes, characters and places), etc. It even offers users a link for legal deposit of their script with the Writers Guild of America.
In fact this software goes well beyond word processing and automatic formatting: it also includes tools for conceiving the script. Index cards make it possible to visualize the entire narrative structure of the film and to rework it in a simple manner by moving the cards corresponding to each scene in the film (the way one would with what was originally called a storyboard in the strict sense of the term).
