Scriptin' Fancy Like: Final Draft
I popped through an Apple Store today and was darkly amused to see that Final Draft - AKA the industry standard - was selling for either PC or Mac at $299.99. (It's a little cheaper if you buy it as an online download).This is powerful softeware, you understand, as you would need a minimum of an Intel Pentium III chip to run it! It can process text and it comes with formats as well as the ability to colour code things and search for specific words.
Hoo boy.
In much the same way that you'll be very lucky to find a graphic design student with a legit copy of Adobe Photoshop, I can say that I don't think I've ever met anyone trying to get into the film or television industry as a scriptwriter that has purchased Final Draft.
It's a good program to have, but it should also be selling for $20 at the most. This, I think, should be true of any software that can run on a computer from twelve years ago while basically being a pumped and tweaked version of something from the Microsoft Office Suite circa 1996.
So uh yeah, I guess I have made my feelings pretty clear about this!
But what else needs to be made clear is that however you get it, you should get it. For whatever original reason, this is indeed the most well known and commonly used scriptwriting software. It does have all sorts of useful features that will make life a lot easier for you than if you were to try and imitate them with macros in Word. People may actually send you Final Draft files and expect you to be able to open them.
But for gods sake, don't buy the latest version fresh off the new arrivals shelf. If you're the kind of aspiring scriptwriter who can afford to do that, well then you must be really doing it for love because you sure don't need the money!
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