John August

Highland

Scanning scripts on your iPhone with Weekend Read + Prizmo

Apps, Geek Alert, Highland, Weekend Read

This falls more into the category of “because you can” than “you definitely should.” It’s more tech demo than recommended workflow.

The [Prizmo](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prizmo-scanning-ocr-speech/id366791896?mt=8) app for iOS has built-in OCR, which means you can scan documents and access the underlying text. Learning this, I immediately tried using it to go from a printed screenplay to [Weekend Read](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8).

It actually works.

It’s far from perfect. Prizmo has no inherent sense of what a screenplay is, so it sometimes divides text into blocks it shouldn’t. (Double-spaces after periods are often a contributing factor.) Weekend Read does the best it can with the somewhat slapdash PDF Prizmo gives it.

If you have an entire screenplay to convert, you’re likely to have a much better outcome with an [actual scanner](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATZ9QMO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00ATZ9QMO&linkCode=as2&tag=johnaugustcom-20) and [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12) to make a real, editable document.

Still, Weekend Read + Prizmo kind of works. In certain cases, it might even be useful. Actors with audition sides, for example.

And the fact that you can do it all on the phone in your pocket is amazing.

Introducing Weekend Read

Apps, FDX Reader, Fountain, Highland, News, Weekend Read

[product photo](http://highland.quoteunquoteapps.com/wr-blog)We have a new app. It’s called [Weekend Read](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread). It’s for reading scripts on your iPhone.

It’s [free in the App Store](http://highland.quoteunquoteapps.com/wr-blog).

Up until now, reading screenplays on an iPhone has been *terrible.* It’s all squinting and pinching.

Weekend Read takes screenplay PDFs, Final Draft and Fountain files and reformats them to look terrific on your iPhone.

Weekend Read is only for the iPhone.

Why only the iPhone, and not the iPad? Numbers.

chart

Our sophisticated market analysis revealed that there were zero good apps in this category.

###New yet familiar

If you’re acquainted with our other apps, you may be saying, “Well, it sounds like they took the ‘reader’ part of [FDX Reader](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fdx-reader/id437362569?mt=8) and the PDF-melting parts of Highland and put them together in one app.”

You’re right. That’s exactly what we did.

But we didn’t stop there. We built in search, new fonts, Dark Mode, a new page jumper, character highlighting and full-screen mode.

We added Fountain and Markdown, including images.

And because a reader needs something to read, we beefed up Dropbox support and gave users a hand-curated (and continually-updated) list of For Your Consideration scripts and Project Gutenberg titles.

The Weekend Read library holds four scripts at a time. If you choose, you can unlock the app to store hundreds. It’s a single in-app purchase.

###The present and the future

**(updated 2/12/2014)** We launched yesterday afternoon. The response has been terrific. We shipped more copies of Weekend Read in twelve hours than we did of FDX Reader in its whole life.

We didn’t nudge people to leave reviews on the App Store, but a lot of users chose to. Thank you.

A couple of common questions on Twitter:

**”Why hasn’t someone done this before?”**

We actually tried to. The hardware just wasn’t fast enough. ((The iPhone 4 is still debatably not fast enough. One advantage to making the app free is that users can decide for themselves whether the lag is acceptable.)) So we owe a huge debt to Apple and all the clever silicon engineers who make it possible to build apps like ours.

**”Can you make an Android or Kindle version of Weekend Read?”**

Unfortunately, no. Weekend Read relies on a lot of special iOS 7 stuff, and shares quite a bit of code base with Highland for Mac. We’d have to start from zero to make an Android version, and that would pull us away from all our current products.

**”Could you add notes?”**

We could. At a certain point, we had to decide where to stop for version 1.0.

Every feature you add has the potential to increase complexity in a way that compromises the purpose of the app. So I want to make sure that if we add notes, they feel just right.

**”Will this free-then-upgrade business model work?”**

We’ll see. For me, it was important that users have the chance to try Weekend Read with their own scripts. Happy users are likely to keep using Weekend Read, and many will eventually decide it’s worth it to pay for the bigger library.

But if they don’t — if they keep deleting files to stay under the limit — that’s okay too. My goal with Weekend Read was to make the experience of reading scripts on the iPhone better. Emotional profits are worth something, too.

###Speak up

We already have David Wain, Rawson Thurber and Dan Etheridge singing Weekend Read’s praises, but I’m actively seeking one more blurb.

So if you like the app, tweet a blurb with the hashtag [#WeekendRead](http://twitter.com/home?status=%23WeekendRead). Over the next few days, I’ll be picking out my favorites to add to the official [App Store description](http://highland.quoteunquoteapps.com/wr-blog).

To celebrate Weekend Read’s launch, we’re also offering [Highland at 50% off through Friday](http://highland.quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-fifty-percent). Now that you have an app for reading Fountain files, it’s time to start writing them.

Final Draft and WGA registration

Follow Up, Fountain, Highland, Screenwriting Software

Update: Final Draft has removed the “preferred file format” line from their site.

In prepping for our [Final Draft episode](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-one-with-the-guys-from-final-draft), I came across [this tidbit](http://store.finaldraft.com/final-draft-9.html) on their site:

> The market leader and the preferred file format of the Writers Guild of America West Online Script Registration.

That surprised me. Here is the actual wording on the [WGAw Registry website](http://www.wgawregistry.org/webrss/regdetails.html):

> Preferred file formats are ASCII, XML, PDF (Adobe Acrobat), Word, Final Draft , and Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000; however, all file formats will be accepted.

> In addition, other screenplay software and standard computer file formats are acceptable.

So according to the WGA Registry itself, Final Draft is **a** preferred file format, not **the** preferred file format. Which doesn’t seem to be a claim worth trumpeting that loudly, considering the other options include “all file formats.”

Final Draft does get a small logo on the WGAw Registry site, though. Final Draft put out a [press release](http://www.deadline.com/2013/11/final-draft-wgaw-final-draft-9-2014/) about that. So Final Draft has some special relationship with the WGA. Perhaps it’s the most preferred of all the preferred formats, which include basically anything capable of rendering text.

And speaking of text, ASCII! Younger readers might not even recognize this term. It’s the plainest of plain text, just 128 characters. Do you have a dot-matrix printer? Feed it some ASCII.

Since you can register basically any type of file, can you register scripts written in Fountain? Yes.

Fountain is just text. So if you’re writing a script in Highland or Slugline or Scrivener or Fade In or the growing number of apps that use Fountain, the WGA Registry is happy to take it. PDFs are also a good choice, because they look like a printed screenplay.

While we’re at it, *should* you register your script with the WGA?

I have no strong opinion. For legal purposes, it can be useful to show you wrote something before a certain date. It’s [no substitute for copyright registration](http://zernerlaw.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/it’s-time-for-the-writer’s-guild-to-shut-down-the-wga-registry/), but then again, in many cases the screenwriter and the studio will be engaging in the mutually-beneficial practice of claiming something was a work-for-hire. So I don’t have an all-purpose answer.

All I know is that if you choose to register your script with the WGA, it doesn’t have to be Final Draft.

Fountain 1.1 — “Use The Force”

Apps, Fountain, Highland, Screenwriting Software

We’re about to put out the first revision to [Fountain](http://fountain.io) since we launched it two years ago, and are calling for comment from users and developers.

When we were developing the plain text screenwriting syntax, we tried to balance normal uses and edge cases. Overall, I think we think we got Fountain mostly right. But Stu Maschwitz and I always expected that we’d evolve the specification as we learned more about how people use it on a daily basis.

The theme of the Fountain 1.1 update is “Use The Force.” It’s all about better control over “forcing” elements.

Most times in Fountain, you don’t need to force anything. It just understands what you want. But when you need to, you can force a Scene Heading with a leading period. You can force a Transition using a leading greater-than symbol.

For Fountain 1.1, we’re discussing adding two new forceable elements, and making a change to how Action is forced.

## LYRICS

Highland has been testing a Lyrics variation on Dialogue for a while now, and it works. We think it’s time to make it official.

You create a Lyric by starting with a tilde ~.

~Willy Wonka! Willy Wonka! The amazing chocolatier!

~Willy Wonka! Willy Wonka! Everybody give a cheer!

The parser will remove the ~ and leave it up to the app to style the Lyric appropriately. For screenplays, lyrics are often handled like a dialogue element, but in italics. ((Courier Prime italics are especially nice for lyrics.)) For stage musicals, it’s often uppercase and placed on the left margin.

Lyrics are always forced. There is no “automatic” way to get them.

## CHARACTER

The ability to force a Character element will be helpful for names that require lower-case letters, and for non-Roman languages, where a character might be named something like 黒澤.

To force a Character element, precede a line with the “at” symbol: @

@McCLANE

Yippie ki-yay! I got my lower-case C back!

The parser will remove the @ and interpret McCLANE as Character, preserving its mixed case.

Speaking of lowercase, one other change is that Character Extensions, the parenthetical notations that are on the same line as a Character element, are no longer required to be uppercase:

HANS (on the radio)
What was it you said?

The parser interprets HANS (on the radio) as a Character element.

## ACTION

Figuring out how to handle forced action required the most discussion.

Fountain interprets an uppercase line followed by a second line as a Character. Most of the time, that’s what you want:

MARY

Hi, Tom.

But sometimes you really want two lines of action, with no blank line between them. You’re going to for a style — but Fountain doesn’t know that. So instead you get:

BOOM

BOOM BOOM. Closer.

In Fountain 1.0, we allowed the user to force Action elements with two trailing spaces.

BOOM{two spaces}

BOOM BOOM. Closer.

This has turned out to be problematic in practice. The spaces are invisible, and can be introduced by accident as you write. Highland and Slugline users got confused. Hell, I got confused, and I co-created the syntax.

MARY{two spaces I didn’t realize were there}

Wait! Why isn’t my character name where it should be? Why isn’t my dialogue being handled like dialogue? Nima!

Furthermore, not all Fountain apps supported the spaces consistently.

In the end, we’d like more transparency and less invisibility. Using spaces to force Action should be deprecated.

In Fountain 1.1, we propose that users force Action by preceding a line with an exclamation point:

!BOOM
BOOM BOOM. Closer.

The parser removes the ! and interprets BOOM as Action.

BOOM  

BOOM BOOM. Closer.

Since forcing action is rare, and the other changes are purely additive (and evident to the naked eye), we don’t anticipate huge issues for most users.

Unless we hear a hue and cry about these changes, we anticipate making them official next week. Apps can start supporting this syntax shortly thereafter.

But we’re not stopping there. Upcoming goals for Fountain include:

1. Better consistency among apps when parsing Fountain. We keep finding edge cases, and want to make sure they are handled the same way regardless of which app you’re using.
2. New syntax for marking changes or highlighting elements in finished documents.
3. Continued development of screenplay-like formats, including three-camera and stageplays.

If you have notes or suggestions, I’d invite you to join the discussion on the [Take Fountain](https://app.glassboard.com/web/app/boards/dff2b3bf-5f61-4ab6-8a64-16c71dd57160) Glassboard. Registration is free and open to everyone.