I’ve just finished my first script and a few people who I’d like to impress have asked me to send it to them over email. My question is, what is the proper format for sending scripts through email? Do I attach it as a Final Draft document? Convert it to a Word document? Something else I don’t know about? Thanks.
–Ryan
Los Angeles
Since you can’t count on your friends having the right version of any given program, your best bet is to convert it to a .pdf document. Both Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter can do this pretty easily.
In Screenwriter, choose “Print…” from the File menu, then choose “PDF (Adobe Acrobat) File” from the “Print To:” pop-up menu. Screenwriter gives you the option to make bookmarks from all the scene headings in the file, which is helpful.
In Final Draft, simply choose “Save as PDF…” from the File menu. One caveat: in some versions of Final Draft, the .pdfs generated this way are huge.
As an alternate for Mac OS X, you can choose “PDF” from the main print dialog box, which bypasses the program and grabs the real information that would be sent to the printer. This system-wide ability of Mac OS X is a godsend; I use it all the time.
Almost everyone I know uses .pdfs these days to turn in scripts. You can pretty much count on them printing out properly, and it saves a lot of hassle dealing with couriers and photocopiers.