![]() ![]() Veteran Final Draft users contemplating an upgrade can rest assured that all the bugs that plagued the release of version 7 didn’t show up for the picnic this time around. It does what it’s supposed to do, and it does it well. Overall, I was very impressed by the stability and formatting consistency of Final Draft 8. Thanks to color coding in the Scene Navigator, a single glance helps you identify improperly interwoven stretches of story. How is this useful? Well, one might color-code scenes according to whether they represent the adventure A-story, the romance B-story, or the humorous C-story. In addition, it now provides a variety of scene information in table format, including scene start pages, scene page count, and color coding. First off, it’s now a floating palette, so you can leave it open all the time when you’re writing and use it to quickly navigate to portions of your script in progress. Most importantly, it lets you add a title to each scene, like “Hero Finds Amulet.” The resulting view essentially becomes a high-level skeletal outline of your story–very handy.įinal Draft 8’s Scene Navigator is a big improvement over previous versions’ Navigator function. Though I really enjoyed the double-sided interface, I found myself wishing that I could just flip individual cards with a mouse click.Īlso useful for story planning and evaluation is the newly added Scene View feature, which strips your script to its bare bones, displaying only slug lines, a little description, and page numbers. ![]() Unfortunately, flipping the cards is a little clunky, as you have to select the appropriate Index Cards state in the View menu, which then flips all cards simultaneously. The virtual index cards that are used for outlining and notes are now double-sided-one side displays scene notes and the other displays corresponding scene dialogue and description. I went along with this, yet the update completely crashed my software, leading me to find alternative options.Final Draft’s Index Card feature also gets a usability boost in version 8. ![]() I also reached a point where my software was working fine, but told that I needed to update it in order to work with my new computer. While I understand the need for updates, I do not understand the frequency and the fact that it would knock out certain features such as the writer collaborating feature (which can now be easily replicated with online websites). This led to several collaborators having a different version of Final Draft that couldn't communicate with each other. While that might sound reasonable, the updates were frequent and always cost substantial amounts of money (for just an update!). Numerous features never worked for reasons that as far as I can tell were due to the compatibility of different software versions. The ease of use and the quality of the final document was a true thrill when I was beginning my career. There was an incredible thrill seeing a software that easily and smoothly formatted my words into industry standard screenplays - ESPECIALLY after having done it for quite some time manually in a more commonly used word processor. This led me to a much more cost-effective alternative that I have been incredibly happy with since. I was unfortunately rubbed the wrong way by the way my script fell apart and being told the only way to save my work was to buy the incredibly expensive, new version of the software. Seeing the scripts and really getting a knack for the craft that brought them to life. ![]()
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