Tuesday, May 31, 2005

I'm starting to try out Movie Magic Screenwriter after Craig's huge recommendation.

It seems to be a well-thought-out program with more bells and whistles. I'm just getting into it, so this is just a first impression.

It has a Windows-y look and feel. I'm a tad uncomfortable how the script looks on the page, and there aren't a lot of view options -- in fact, no View menu at all. It feels like a Windows port rather than a Mac program.

I'm irritated that I can't import easily from Final Draft into MMS. You have to export in RTF from FD, and then import into MMS. Which strips out useful things like scene numbers and revision marks. Craig Mazin recommends cutting and pasting. That's simpler and just as effective, but still, you lose information.

You would think that the MMS boys could crack the FD file code pretty easily and come up with a patch that allows you to import and export seamlessly. That is, if they want people who are already using FD to switch. I don't want to have to painfully import every screenplay on my hard drive, and most shows I know use FD. Because of the loss of info, I couldn't use MMS on a show that's using FD. Couldn't switch back and forth easily. Don't wanna have to manually restore info every time I get or send a script to or from the World of FD.

The reason I was able to stay on Mac rather than having to go over into evil Windows, back in the day when you had to use sneaker-net, was that Mac always made it easy to read evil Windows firmy-disks. If I'd had to manually comb through every file every time I got a file from the Windows Empire, I'd've had to leave the beloved Vale of Mac.

So how about it, Write Bros? One simple patch, that's all I ask!

1:40 PM

3 Comments:

Dude....try this.

Copy the entire text of the FD doc (select all, then copy). Then paste into a new MMS doc.

That import method works much better.

By  Anonymous, at 2:40 PM  

Yes, it's primarily FD's crappy export format you're struggling with. Also, you can vary the view in the program options pretty widely.

By  Unknown, at 3:19 PM  

Hi, Alex. I live by MM Screenwriter. Tried FD and hated it. Besides it being unstable, it seems to be missing some of the features of MMS. Probably the main reason I don't use it is I do a lot of breakdowns and never could use FD for exporting to MM Scheduling. I would just make sure that your slug-lines (scene headngs) are properly formatted. Copy and paste is the easiest way. Then just go in MMS, add the scene numbers and manually change them to match your A,B, whatever scene nos. I could walk you through it.

By  Anonymous, at 9:00 AM  

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