Apps

Introducing Weekend Read

February 11, 2014 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.

Period Space

Episode - 130

Go to Archive

February 11, 2014 Apps, Film Industry, Follow Up, Rights and Copyright, Scriptnotes, Transcribed, Words on the page, Writing Process

John and Craig tackle the greatest controversy in screenwriting: how many spaces to put after the period. From there, it’s follow-up on the Final Draft episode, including some behind-the-scene details.

Why is it often better to write in public spaces? How do you keep your hero in the driver’s seat? What do you do if you’re dating an emotional vampire? We have some answers.

We also have annoyances: the $1 billion lawsuit against Tom Cruise, similar hijinks with The New Girl, and Time Tailor.

The Big Fish cast album is available on iTunes and Amazon. A few last Scriptnotes t-shirts are available on the John August Store.

Links:

* [Slate](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html) on why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period
* John’s [2005 blog post](http://johnaugust.com/2005/fixing-double-spaces-after-periods) on fixing double-spaces after periods
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 65](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-next-117-pages), in which John and Craig discuss their period-space preferences
* [Courier Prime](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/)
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 129: The One with the Guys from Final Draft](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-one-with-the-guys-from-final-draft)
* Kent Tessman’s [Notes on Scriptnotes](http://www.kenttessman.com/2014/02/notes-on-scriptnotes/) blog post
* [How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/quarkxpress-the-demise-of-a-design-desk-darling/)
* Heather Havrilesky’s [Ask Polly: I Moved To A New City To Be With An Emotional Vampire](http://www.theawl.com/2014/01/ask-polly-i-moved-to-a-new-city-to-be-with-an-emotional-vampire) on The Awl
* The AV Club on [Tom Cruise being sued for one billion dollars](http://www.avclub.com/article/tom-cruise-is-being-sued-for-allegedly-stealing-th-107570)
* THR on [The New Girl lawsuit](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/fox-wme-peter-chernin-sued-671788)
* [Time Tailor](http://www.visualdatainc.com/time_tailor.htm)
* [SuperCook.com](http://supercook.com/) tells you recipes to cook with what you have on hand
* [One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385351836/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by B. J. Novak
* B.J. on the [Nerdist Podcast](https://www.nerdist.com/2014/02/nerdist-podcast-b-j-novak/)
* The Big Fish cast album on [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/big-fish-original-broadway/id816289324?ign-mpt=uo%3D2) and [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H3UKZ6E/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* We have a few shirts left in [The John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_130.m4a) | [mp3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_130.mp3).

**UPDATE** 2-17-14: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/scriptnotes-ep-130-period-space-transcript).

Final Draft and WGA registration

February 5, 2014 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.