Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Movie Outline Software

Howdy writers,

As the title says this post is about software. Screenwriting software to be exact. In my travels, I came across this new package called Movie Outline. It's actually recommended by UNK.

I grabbed a demo of it and I really think I'm going to switch. I can get an upgrade version for a few bucks more than FD8. I'm only upgrading because I use Vista X64 and the FD7 PDF printer doesn't work.

I definitely suggest that anyone give it a try. It has a lot more features than FD and Movie Magic. It lets you add character bios, outlines, story notes and lots more. It exports and imports from FD.

I like it because I have stacks of 5x8s that are flowing all over my desk and shelves. This would let me put all of my notes and stuff in the file for the screenplay. I just need to find out if they have a working 64-bit PDF driver. They do, I'll be getting it in a few weeks.

4 comments:

Unk said...

What I think I like most about Movie Outline is that I can completely structure my screenplay in one place without having to refer to some other piece of paper OR program.

Glad you like it.

Unk

Christian H. said...

Really that's what really caught my attention. The easy way to add steps and characters.
Leaps and bounds ahead of FD or MMS.

Jim Sullivan said...

Christian,

Does MO export to FD or Screenwriter?

I haven't tried it, but maybe I'll get a demo to check it out.

I have Contour... meh. Dramatica.. expensive!

So may of these outlining programs want you to 'subscribe' to their theory of how to outline a story.

Personally, once I got used to how clunky it is, I like Save the Cat -- mostly because you can do the beats, then add scenes with a slugline and paragraph of what happens in the scene, then export the whole shebang to FD.

From there, you just write the scene then delete the notes.

BTW, with Vista X64, upgrading to FD8 does no good as far as PDFs go-- still doesn't work.

The only workaround for FD8 or FD7 is to add a 3rd party PDF writer like PDF Creator (www.pdfforge.org), which shows up like a printer. Send to printer, select PDFcreator instead of your printer and voila. Sort of.

Awkward, but it works.

Christian H. said...

@ashes
It will export to text and allow you to import to FD. I'm glad you told me that the PDF still doesn't work. I was going to get FD8, but with the coupon it's only $99.

The PDF printer works great on X64. That's the best thing.