John August

Highland

Veronica Mars Attacks

Episode - 81

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Film Industry, Follow Up, Highland, News, Scriptnotes, Story and Plot, Transcribed

Craig and John discuss the big Veronica Mars/Kickstarter news in one of the more contentious podcasts to date. If you like umbrage, this is the show for you.

Next up, Highland has finally shipped. The plaintext screenplay editor (and PDF melter) raises questions about the assumption of security-through-laboriousness and the monoculture around Final Draft.

Finally, we discuss three of the points in Emma Coats’s Pixar Story Rules that are easy to forget but too important to ignore.

LINKS:

* [Untitled Screenplays](http://untitledscreenplays.tumblr.com/) and [Unfinished Scripts](https://twitter.com/UnfinishedS) are similar but different
* Use the code “SCRIPT” to unlock [discounted seats](http://johnaugust.com/2013/big-fish-previews-and-special-unlock-code) for the first four Big Fish performances, and [let us know you’re coming](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com)!
* One of John’s many doppelgängers [as Hebrew National’s Uncle Sam](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf2j-YzZRAA)
* [The Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/when-america-was-female/273672/) on Uncle Sam’s “older, classier sister” Columbia
* [The Veronica Mars Movie Project](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project) on Kickstarter
* James Poneywisic of Time [on Veronica Mars](http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/13/why-the-world-needs-a-kickstarter-veronica-mars-movie/)
* [The Hollywood Reporter](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/has-veronica-mars-kickstarter-campaign-428903)’s coverage, including a quote from writer/producer John Rogers
* Luke Pebler’s [guest post on Suzanne Scott’s blog](http://www.suzanne-scott.com/2013/03/15/guest-post-my-gigantic-issue-with-the-veronica-mars-kickstarter/)
* [Highland](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/), the plaintext screenplay editor for Mac, half-off through March 31st at the [Mac App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?ls=1&mt=12)
* [Emma Coats’s](https://twitter.com/lawnrocket) 22 story rules on [The Pixar Touch](http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-version.html)
* [StageWrite for iPad](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stagewrite-for-ipad/id504168392?mt=8) at the Mac App Store
* Give a loan and change a life with [Kiva](http://www.kiva.org/start)
* Direct your umbrage [here](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) instead of Twitter
* OUTRO: [Kickstart My Heart](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd4h-BqwlXI) acoustic cover by whipsy

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_81.m4a).

**UPDATE** 3-24-13: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-ep-81-veronica-mars-attacks-transcript).

Highland ships

Apps, Fountain, Highland

highland iconHighland, our long-in-beta screenplay editor, is finally available in the [Mac App Store today](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12).

It’s regularly priced at $19.99, but through the end of the month, it’s half-off at $9.99.

In addition to letting you write scripts in plain text, Highland converts files between PDF, Final Draft (.fdx) and Fountain formats. It works in all directions.

Yes, all directions — you can give it a PDF of a screenplay and it will melt it down to an editable file. That seems like magic, but it’s actually just a lot of hard work, and a year’s worth of report cards submitted by beta testers.

Melting PDFs is a feat that no other screenwriting app even attempts, so we made a [little video about it](http://player.vimeo.com/video/59698758?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&autoplay=0):

We’ll never be able to convert every PDF, which is one reason we offer a [free demo version](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/) so you can see how it works before you buy it.

With Highland, you can also tackle FDX files without Final Draft. We’ve found our users are often writing in Google Docs or TextMate or vim — or on their iPads. Whatever setup you prefer, Highland can get you into and out of Final Draft smoothly when you need special features.

Highland is a great bridge between apps, but over the last year we’ve found more and more users are simply doing their writing in Highland. It’s a full-featured editor, with spelling, versions and find-and-replace. Because it’s plain text, you can focus on the words and not the formatting.

The biggest changes to Highland are easy to spot: a new icon, a new UI, and two new fonts. Courier Prime is an obvious addition, but we’ve also included Highland Sans, a brand-new editing typeface that’s sharp on the screen and easy on the eyes.

highland fontsOther additions include Dark Mode for late-night writing, fast pagination and Apple’s speech-to-text dictation.

And there are more cool things in the works. But today is a major milestone, because Highland was such a long time coming. I want to thank Ryan, Nima, Stuart and our amazing beta testers for their perseverence.

Check out more information, including a FAQ, at [Quote-Unquote Apps](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/).

You can find Highland on the [Mac App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12).

Outlining scripts in Fountain

Fountain, Highland

Stu Maschwitz offers an overview of [outlining in Fountain](http://prolost.com/foutline):

> Organization and structure are such an important issues that I made sure Fountain had some provision for supporting them. Fountain’s Sections are invisible, hierarchical markers that you can use to demarcate the structural points of your story—or anything else you like. Synopses allow you to annotate a Section — or a Scene Heading — with non-printing descriptive text.

> You can add Sections and Synopses to your Fountain screenplay as you work, or as a part of rewriting. You can also begin the writing process with them. You can use them to denote scenes, sequences, act breaks, or whatever is helpful to your writing process.

Because they don’t print in the formatted script, [section and synopsis tags](http://fountain.io/syntax#section-sections) can help you structure the document in a way that makes sense for you as you’re writing. Rather than just a scene header like…

EXT. BEACH – DAY

…you can throw a meaningful label on it like…

##Giant crabs attack campers

EXT. BEACH – DAY

When we were drafting up the Fountain spec, I honestly didn’t pay much attention to these tags, because I didn’t think I’d use either much. But in writing my ABC pilot, I found them genuinely useful.

I used the top-level section mark (#) to denote act breaks, and the synopsis tag (=) to quickly jot out what was happening in upcoming scenes. That’s great for the end of the day, when you’re leaving some gas in the tank for tomorrow’s writing.

The = can also serve as a quick-and-dirty to-do list, such as:

INT. BEDROOM – DAY

= shorter. start on Asha

Several of the existing Fountain apps — and many of the upcoming ones — can do magic things with section and synopsis tags, formatting them differently or collecting them for an outline view. Together, they make it easier to jump through your script. Rather than looking for a page number or a location, you can skip right to the section or note you want.

Final Draft Reader’s limited view

Apps, FDX Reader, Highland, Screenwriting Software

Late last week, Final Draft released a new version of [Final Draft Reader](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/final-draft-reader/id497421221?mt=8), adding support for iPhones to their heretofore iPad-only app.

From a basic design standpoint, their iPhone implementation is almost identical to what we did with [FDX Reader](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fdx-reader/id437362569?mt=8), using a continuous scroll rather than page-flipping to accommodate the smaller screen. I won’t break out the old imitation-is-flattery bromide; it’s simply the right choice given the situation.

Unfortunately, you’re going to be scrolling a lot with Final Draft’s version, because they insist on using traditional Courier. It’s a mistake. You simply can’t fit very much on the screen using that font.

Compare [two screenshots](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/fd-v-fdx-72.jpg) from Frankenweenie:

iphone screenshots

Like FDX Reader, Final Draft Reader allows you to reduce the font size. By doing so, you can fit the same amount of Frankenweenie on the screen. But you probably wouldn’t like the [results](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/smaller-fd.jpg):

smaller final draft screenshot

Final Draft Reader isn’t trying to match printed pages like it does in portrait view on the iPad, so there’s simply no good argument for sticking with Courier for this “Reader View.” It’s just bad design.

Being an official product, the app provides “100% accurate Final Draft pagination, formatting and page breaking.” That’s like saying only Coca-Cola can provide pure Coke flavor, but fine.

Their app can do several things FDX Reader doesn’t even attempt, such as editing ScriptNotes and showing colored page revisions. You can link to your Dropbox account, but only for exporting files *from* the app, so it’s not particularly useful. That’s consistent with a lot of what I found: placeholders and possibilities rather than actual utility.

Final Draft Reader is now free. That makes sense; they want users to pay for the $50 Final Draft Writer app.

We’ll keep selling and supporting FDX Reader as an alternative, but as I wrote [back in February](http://johnaugust.com/2012/pricing-fdx-reader), we’re not actively developing it anymore. Our next projects include more ambitious efforts like [Highland](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/).