John August

John

Weekend Read gains new powers, new scripts

Apps, Highland, Weekend Read

[product photo](http://highland.quoteunquoteapps.com/wr-blog) Weekend Read has an update in the App Store today. Version 1.0.2 greatly improves PDF reading and adds a lot of new content. It’s free, so [go get it.](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8)

[As promised](http://johnaugust.com/2014/weekend-read-learning-from-launch), this release tackles issues with screenplay PDFs originating in Celtx and Fade In, and has much better support for A4 paper sizes and international characters.

We also worked with The Black List ([blcklst.com](http://www.blcklst.com)) to allow members to read watermarked scripts inside the app.

If you have script that didn’t look right under the old build, delete it and load it back into your library. There’s a good chance it will work now.

Ripping apart and reassembling PDFs is an imperfect art, so we’ll never be able to read every screenplay PDF. ((Some PDFs are nothing but images, while others use watermarks that deliberately prevent text-parsing. And some are odd for their own odd reasons, such as Asghar Farhadi’s script for The Past. It looks normal to the human eye, but under the hood it’s anything but.)) But this build gets us closer than ever. And because Weekend Read shares code with [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12), these improvements will carry over to the next build of our flagship Mac app, which should be out soon.

While bug fixes are great, I’m most excited about our new content.

###Filling the shelves

A great reader needs great writing, so we rebuilt the For Your Consideration section in a way that lets us add new material — new scripts, new outlines, entire new categories — in real time. We’ll use this ability to feature both established screenwriters and folks you’ve never heard of. And because so much of the best writing is happening in television, we will regularly include pilots and series as Featured Shows.

– Our first Featured Writer is Rian Johnson, who brings us his scripts for Brick, Looper and The Brothers Bloom.

– Our first Featured Show is Hannibal, offering all the scripts from the first season, courtesy of show creator Bryan Fuller.

– We’ve also included the transcripts for every episode of [Scriptnotes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/scriptnotes-podcast/id462495496?mt=2).

Our plan is to add and replace content frequently, so if you find something you like, make sure to add it to your library so it doesn’t disappear on you.

One final note: As a developer, one downside to frequent app updates is that each new build hides the reviews from earlier users. So if you love Weekend Read, please consider [leaving us a review](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8), even if you already did for version 1.0.1.

Thanks, and enjoy the read.

Outros needed

Follow Up

Every episode of Scriptnotes starts with the same five notes:

Beginning with episode 98, every episode ends with a new listener-created outro, each one a variation on that same five-note theme.

We’ve had some amazing outros, both because our listeners are geniuses and the basic melody is so adaptable. You can [hear all of them here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros).

Our stockpile of outros has started to wane, so consider this an official call for entries. If you’d like to submit one of your own, send a link to ask@johnaugust.com. SoundCloud is terrific if you use it, but you can also attach an mp3. ((If you use SoundCloud, be sure to enable downloading. Also tag your entry as Scriptnotes so users can find it.))

While we’ve had a wide range of styles, I can think of a few variants no one has submitted:

– an Old West theme
– anything baroque
– Gregorian chanting
– something like [The Clapping Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76EO3PQHzKw&list=RD76EO3PQHzKw#t=12)
– the style of Aaron Copland
– the style of Danny Elfman (surprising, really)

Some of my favorite outros are riffs on familiar movie themes. Matthew Chilelli has done two. The first one in the style of Close Encounters:

The second one was for our Frozen episode:

I can imagine some other promising movie-homage riffs, if anyone cares to try:

– the flute melody from Alien
– the violin theme from The Godfather
– “Everything is Awesome” from the LEGO movie
– the Downton Abbey theme
– the Harry Potter theme
– every James Bond title song

The best outros we get are short, usually about 30 seconds. They quickly establish the stylistic idea, then weave in the five-note melody, before getting to a smart conclusion. The endings are especially important. We avoid fading out if we can.

Weekend Read: Learning from Launch

Apps, Highland, Weekend Read

[product photo](http://highland.quoteunquoteapps.com/wr-blog)The response to [Weekend Read](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8) has been terrific. It’s by far the most popular app we’ve made, and its success has had a nice spillover to its cousin on the Mac, [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12).

While it’s still early, Weekend Read’s pricing model seems to be successful.

The app is free, but the library is limited to four scripts. Upgrading the app via in-app purchase allows you to store hundreds of files. So far, 33.2% of users upgrade when presented the option. ((We don’t show the Upgrade Now choice until the library is full, so some users will never get the chance. In the next build, we’ll give users the option to upgrade at any point.))

Since it’s free to install, there’s no reluctance to sampling; the only people who pay for the app are the ones who’ve tried it and like it. I think that’s why reviews have been so positive, and why support emails have been about actual issues and feature requests rather than unhappy feelings.

###The wonder and horror of PDF

Weekend Read supports Final Draft, Fountain and Markdown formats, but its special magic trick is the ability to extract text from screenplay PDFs. We weren’t sure what the split would be among the various file types.

It turns out 86% of the files loaded by Weekend Read are PDFs. FDX and Fountain are running equal at about 4% each, with the remainder being Markdown or plain text. I was surprised to see to see it skewed so far towards PDF, and for Fountain to have achieved parity with FDX.

We spent two years getting good at handling PDFs for Highland, yet our thousands of new users for Weekend Read have revealed some things we missed.

* **A4-sized PDFs.** Sorry, Europe. We didn’t mean to cut off any lines. Fixed in next update.

* **International glyphs in PDFs.** For Fountain and Final Draft scripts, Weekend Read does a solid job with Ørni’s über-piñata. But our PDF parser often omits or mangles non-English characters. Fixed in the next update.

* **PDFs from Celtx.** None of our beta testers use Celtx, and apparently none of the For Your Consideration scripts were written using it. Until users pointed it out, we had no idea about the wordsrunningtogetherwithoutspaces problem. Fixed in the next update.

* **Scripts from Blcklist.com.** These screenplay are watermarked, but we worked with Franklin Leonard and his team to make sure users can read them in Weekend Read. This should work reliably in the next build.

* **PDFs from Fade In.** PDFs created with Fade In resist all efforts at extracting meaningful text. Fade In’s Kent Tessman has working hard with Nima to get it sorted out, but for now neither side can fix it. On the bright side, Fade In has the ability to save in Fountain and FDX format, both of which Weekend Read handles natively. That may be the best solution we can offer.

###What’s next

The 1.0.2 build focuses on squashing these PDF issues, and adds new features to the For Your Consideration section.

The most common feature requests have been for an iPad version, and the ability to add notes. We’re working on both, but have no ETA.

We’ve also had inquiries about volume purchases from studios and agencies. There’s currently no way to offer bulk in-app purchases, but we’re considering creating a special Studio Edition that ships already upgraded. If you’re interested, [contact support](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/support).

One final note: The Oscars are this Sunday, so some studios may begin taking their awards-season scripts offline. If you’re interested in reading any of the screenplays in the For Your Consideration section, grab it now.

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.