Gear « The Indie Auteur

NoLo Shooters’ Holiday Wishlist

Here are some last-minute Holiday shopping ideas for the No Budget / Low Budget (NoLo) filmmaker in your life. Glancing at the prices, one thing you’ll notice is that even at the low end, quality filmmaking isn’t really a “no-budget” proposition.

Most “no-budget” filmmakers are able to work “no-budget” because they have access to equipment through a school, work, or local film/video coalition that loans out gear. True “no-budget” shooters can work with an under $1000 consumer camcorder that has paltry imaging control settings and use only available light. But once you grow tired of just how awful ninety percent of your footage looks when shooting that way, then it’s time to invest in some decent gear. Renting, of course, is also an option. It depends on how much you shoot.

So if the filmmaker in your life is active enough to use their equipment so often it’d be cheaper to buy than rent, here’s some gear to consider:

(read more “below the fold”)

Filed under: Camera & Light, Gear

Screenplay Formatting Software

It seemed to me that a good follow-up to the post about screenwriting books would be one about screenplay formatting software, so here it is.

Screenwriting requires knowledge of a very specific format. It is quite different than the formats used for novels, stage plays, interactive media (games, educational, etc.), or teleplays (which has different historical formats: one-hour film, half-hour film, and half-hour tape).

Using professional screenwriting software will make adhering to the format a lot easier, but doing so is not an excuse to avoid understanding the format and how to use it. It’s up to you to make sure you know how to use your software and what the results should look like, particularly with regard to things like whether or not you want default behavior from the software when it does something currently out of vogue (cont’d at the bottom of pages with continued dialogue blocks being the most obvious).

Why should I spend two hundred bucks on an overspecialized word processor?

Regarding such software, some people inevitably ask: “Can’t I just do all this in Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, OpenOffice, Framemaker, LaTeX, Emacs, etc.?” If you enjoy wasting your time setting up formatting in one of those pieces of software, and you don’t asipre to write for the screen professionally, go for it. (People also ask if they can use a font other than courier, the correct response to which is: “What benefit could you possibly attain by using a different font?”)

The reason I say that you need professional screenplay formatting software if you aspire to write professional is definitely not because I think that a truly great screenplay can only be written in the proper format — but its chances of being read by anyone who might help your career along are greatly diminished by failing to do so.

Furthermore, if you get to the point where you are collaborating with another writer, you will be expected to (a) know how screenplay formatting software generally works, and (b) already own the software they use and be able to exchange files right away (or one of you will rush out and buy the software your collaborator prefers and use your (a) knowledge to quickly get up to speed with it).

Being a screenwriter who doesn’t know how to use professional screenplay formatting software is like being a terrific carpenter who doesn’t use power tools: you may be amazing at the craft, but good luck getting taken seriously in the profession. The sad fact is that a better writer who isn’t as up-to-date with trivium about formatting, style, business approach and tools of the trade is less likely to succeed than a lesser writer who is. It sucks, but I didn’t make the rules.

Which screenplay formatting software should I get?

There are several screenplay formatting tools on the market (and available for free), but if you are serious about this business, there are only two that you will ever purchase. They are:

Final Draft Version 8

The heavyweight industry champion, Final Draft.

Movie Magic Screenwriter Version 6

And the scrappy challenger, Movie Magic Screenwriter.

Any competitor will have a long way to go to catch up with these industry leaders in terms of features and user base, and even those that do are unlikely to survive (case in point is Sophocles, which was a fantastic piece of software that just vanished one day — leaving you unable to buy it, and its owners unable to get support). Other dedicated formatting software is so utterly irrelevant, I am not going waste my time mentioning it.

I will mention Celtx, which is a free preproduction suite that also has an integrated script formatting tool, and even more importantly, can import and export to MMSW and FD (though it does so via text, which can be a lossy process).

Since Celtx is free (the right price for software that isn’t industry recognized), it’s a potentially good choice for your no-budget projects that are totally DIY, and don’t require professional-track tools. You can learn about screenwriting, storyboarding, and scheduling by using Celtx, and then move on to more industry standard tools as your skills and career progress (including transitioning by getting MMSW or FD to write with, and still doing your boards and scheduling in Celtx).

I happen to have both Screenwriter and Final Draft, because through writing classes, writing groups, and collaboration with other writers one-on-one I’ve run into situations where one or the other is required. Both are suitable for writing screenplays (and teleplays, stage plays, and so on — they come with lots of formatting templates).

Given the option to choose, though, my personal preference is for Screenwriter, and it is for one simple reason: I adore the docked left-hand panel that has outline, scenes, notes and bookmarks navigation views.

To me, this is a great writing UI.

Overall, the user interface feels better to me in Screenwriter. Even Final Draft version 8 seems a bit outdated, despite being newer than Screenwriter version 6. Here are the pros and cons of each package:

MMSW — Pros	FD — Pros	MMSW — Cons	FD — Cons
Scene view is integrated into primary UI, as is outline, notes and bookmarks view (you can get rid of it if you want, though).	Scene view has been restored in version 8.	Can’t print to a stack of individual index cards (a 1×1 layout option exists, but it doesn’t print 3×5).	Only one predefined index card layout.
Good customer service.	Good customer service.	Can’t pick the size of the individual index card in the custom layout.	Can’t pick the size of the individual index card in the custom layout.
More choices for index card printing.	Industry standard package and format.	Bug sometimes causes outline or scene view to redraw improperly, but panel is reset by switching to another tab and back (used to crash MMSW, this is now very rare).	Format Assistant used to frequently crash the program.*
More contemporary feel to the user interface.	“Preferred software” status with WGA registry (but you can register within MMSW too).	New version release schedule seems a bit slower than Final Draft.	Simply paging down the script caused redraw problems.*
More format templates.	Better general report options (scene, location, character, cast).	Can’t edit script when viewing index cards, though you can see both windows.	Cut and paste also used to crash intermittently.*
More options to cheat layouts by tweaking element styles.	Collabo-writer Internet real-time shared writing environment.	More options to cheat layouts by tweaking element styles.	No outline, notes or bookmark navigation view.
Better breakdowns and integration with Movie Magic Budgeting.		Annoying free-form title page layout is only option.	Can’t view index cards view and script view side-by-side.

* NOTE: These 3 bugs caused me to abandon FD until the recent version rev, and I’ve only briefly tested version 8 in which all 3 seem to be fixed (so far, under very light testing conditions).

Ultimately the two pacakges are not radically different (there are differences, but they ultimately do the same thing). Which one you choose is primarily a matter of personal choice: download the demos and try them out. The package that you like better is the one that’s best for you.