I did find this tab useful for quickly hopping through the script to track how one character evolves.įinal Draft has always had quite a good array of options for exporting and two additions are welcome new choices. This window is very customizable and allows you to track individual character arcs on a scene by scene basis. It auto-detects each scene based on dialogue, but you can also manually add characters to non speaking scenes.

The Character tab is a new feature that lists all the scenes with a specific character. I don't think this feature is built to be used in collaboration with others, as you would need to send your master FDX file back and forth, but it did work quite well for tracking my own thoughts while I wrote. You can also create your own categories of notes, such as 'Dialogue' or 'Action.' The tab displays all the notes in a list so you can quickly navigate to them and cross them off. A color-coded flag appears on the page when you've added a note, or you can add general notes that aren't page-specific. Like the Scene tab, I never used ScriptNotes before, but in FD9 its quite easy to add notes to your script. The ScriptNotes tab greatly improves this previously terrible feature from FD8. You can now also easily filter the list to quickly find a specific scene. Most of these features are in FD8, but they're now presented in a much more useful way. The Scene tab cleanly displays all your scenes in an efficient list on the top, and the current scene's details on the bottom. Now the navigator contains three tabs: Scene, ScriptNotes, and Characters.

Finally in FD9, a redesigned and improved navigator creates a mostly useful and pleasant experience. Final Draft 9 has recently been released and I spent the last week playing with its new features.Īs with most software of a certain vintage, updates can turn an interface into a cluttered mess of new features piled on top of old ones. It has always suffered the burden of being the first to market, and slowest to adapt.

Zach also developed the popular movie/tv production iOS app Shot Lister, which makes him the perfect candidate for this software review.įinal Draft has the infamous title of being the industry's standard screenwriting app. So when Final Draft offered us the chance to review their latest software release, I asked my friend Zach Lipovsky if he would be interested putting it through a couple laps. Lipovsky is a Canadian-born writer/filmmaker who came to Hollywood as a contestant on the Spielberg-produced reality series On The Lot, and has since directed two films ( Tasmanian Devils and the upcoming reboot Leprechaun: Origins) and produced Afflicted, a found footage hit at TIFF and Fantastic Fest, set to be released by CBS films. Note from Editor Peter Sciretta: While I was once an aspiring screenwriter, its been many years since I've stared at that blank white page with the cursor blinking next to 'FADE IN:'.

Final draft 8 watermark