John August

News

Say hello to Highland

Follow Up, News, Screenwriting Software

Today we’re announcing the beta release of [Highland](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland), our new screenwriting utility.

highland logoHighland lets you convert files between PDF, Final Draft (.fdx) and Fountain. It works in all directions.

→ It creates perfectly-formatted PDFs from Fountain or FDX files.

→ It creates future-proof Fountain files you can edit in any text editor.

→ It melts PDFs, making them editable.

That last part is basically magic. Highland can take almost any screenplay PDF and convert it back to an editable file in seconds.

Here’s a quick walk-through video I made to show how it works:

Highland is a Mac app. We’ll be selling it through the Mac App Store. But before we do that, we need screenwriters to beta test it.

This changes everything (into everything else)
—-

Screenwriters generally work with two kinds of files.

**Native files** like .fdx are for writing and editing. You need specific applications to use these files. They’re prone to obsolescence. If you have any old WriteNow files on your computer, you’ll have a hard time reading them.

**PDFs** are universal, and can be opened on nearly any device. Like digital paper, they’re basically frozen versions of the screenplay. They’re difficult to edit, in part because all the semantic information has been lost.

Last week, we introduced **Fountain files**, which split the difference between native files and PDFs. Because they’re plain text, they’re both universal and highly editable, since they can work with any text editor — and should for decades to come.

Highland is a quick way to move between these three formats.

Obviously, Highland is extremely useful for screenwriters who want to work in Fountain, or want to open a Final Draft file but don’t have the app. But its ability to convert PDFs is probably going to be its most-discussed feature.

Melting PDFs
—

It’s standard practice for screenwriters to deliver PDFs. Readers can easily read and print PDFs, but it’s onerous to change them — so they don’t.

As screenwriters, we’ve relied on security through difficulty: producers, directors and executives aren’t likely to mess with the PDF of a script because it’s just too much hassle.

Fountain takes away the hassle, for better or worse.

I fully expect some pitchforks: *How dare we assist the meddlers?*

I’d argue that there’s nothing inherently “safe” about turning in a PDF. Producers have always been able to muck around with scripts — it was just a lot of work. Relying on laziness is really no security at all.

With Highland, we’re going to respect the basic safeguards a screenwriter might take:

1. If you password-protect your PDF, Highland won’t convert it.
2. If your PDF is just a bunch of images, Highland won’t convert it. (For example, you could print your script then scan it, or use a feature like Bronson Watermarker’s “Deep Burn.”)

Could a meddling producer work around these safeguards? Absolutely. But she could also just have her assistant retype your script. That happens every day.

Highland and Fountain
—

LA-based screenwriters will have already guessed the origins of “Highland.”

Highland Avenue is a major north-south artery through Hollywood, just as Fountain is the famous east-west shortcut.

Much like how the real streets intersect, Highland and Fountain work well together — but they’re not the only ways to get somewhere.

Just as you can take many routes to drive through Hollywood, you should have lots of alternatives for working with your screenplay.

[Fountain](http://fountain.io) is an open-source markup scheme. We’re happy to see a lot of other developers embracing it. Some of them will come up with apps that are better than Highland, either by doing more or doing it smarter.

That’s the goal. That’s success.

But for today, Highland makes working with Fountain a lot easier. After this beta test, we hope to have an app that makes it effortless to move between formats and platforms.

If you want to help, we’re [accepting beta-testers now](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland#beta-signup). For this first round, we’re looking for fairly tech-savvy screenwriters — the app will fail, and we’ll need your help figuring out why. Down the road, we’ll expand the beta to get a better cross-sampling of users.

[Updated at 3:30pm: Due to great response — thanks! yikes! — we have all the beta testers we need for now. Follow us [@qapps](http://twitter.com/qapps) for news on future betas.]

We’re only going to add a few beta testers at a time, so not everyone will get picked. But if all goes well, we should be an inexpensive download before too long.

One More Thing
—

Remember my frustration about Final Draft’s old, incompatible .fdr format? The one with the [five-step workaround](http://johnaugust.com/2012/convert-old-final-draft-files-in-five-clever-but-tedious-steps)?

Well, Nima solved that last night. Highland will be able to open and convert .fdr files to modern formats.

Introducing Fountain

Geek Alert, News, Screenwriting Software

I’m happy to introduce a project we’ve been working on for quite a while.

fountain file[Fountain](http://fountain.io) lets you write screenplays in any text editor on any device, from computers to iPads to smartphones. It’s as simple as we could make it, which is what makes it so useful.  

Fountain files are just text. We use a [straightforward syntax](http://fountain.io/syntax) to indicate what’s what — character names are uppercase, transitions end in “TO:”, and so on.

On the page, Fountain *feels like* a screenplay. When you’re ready for formatting, helper apps do the work of adding margins and page breaks.

Screenwriters can use Fountain for writing scripts, but it’s also ideal for archiving.

Because they’re just text, Fountain files are basically future-proof. You’ll be able to open and edit them 100 years from now. You can’t say the same for .fdr, .mmsw or most of the other proprietary formats. And while .pdfs maintain formatting, they’re nearly impossible to edit.

Why Fountain
—-

Fountain gets its name from Fountain Ave., the famous Hollywood shortcut. ((Asked for advice on the best way an aspiring starlet could get into Hollywood, Bette Davis supposedly replied, “Take Fountain.”))

We see Fountain as a path rather than a destination. It’s not an app. It’s not even really a file format. It’s a way of getting from a jumble of words to a screenplay.

If you’re familiar with [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/), this is the screenwriting equivalent. That’s no coincidence; I actually exchanged my first emails with Markdown’s creator, John Gruber, way back in 2004.

I wrote:

> I’d like to have a Markdown-like syntax for formatting text documents into screenplay form. This way, writers who wanted to use their favorite text editor could still generate well-formatted scripts.

Good ideas sometimes sit around for a while.

In 2008, Nima Yousefi and I built a modest implementation called Scrippets, which we released as a plug-in for WordPress and other platforms. Scrippets made it easy to insert small bits of screenplay-like material in blog posts and forums, but it was never intended for full-length screenplays. ((Scrippets is also the secret sauce in FDX Reader, which is what got us thinking about how we’d handle things like page breaks and scene numbers.))

Credit for the full spec goes to [Stu Maschwitz](http://prolost.com), who developed a similar-but-different format called SPMD (Screenplay Markdown). Recognizing that duplicated effort is wasted effort, we’ve spent the past few months merging the standards to what it is today.

Fountain shares a lot of its syntax with Scrippets, ((Indeed, we’ve folded Scrippets into Fountain, and future versions of the plugin will incorporate the revised syntax.)) but we really rethought everything in order to accommodate a range of writing situations and styles. It’s been a process of balancing philosophical consistency (no symbols) with practical concerns (centering titles). Through it all, Stu’s vision and vigilance moved this from being a good idea to an actual thing.

Fountain has benefitted from its many fathers, including me, Stu, Nima, Martin Vilcans, Brett Terpstra, Jonathan Poritsky, Clinton Torres and Ryan Nelson.

Using Fountain
—

You can write Fountain in any text editor on nearly any device, from an iPad to a Commodore-64. If you can get a text file out of it — even an email — you’re Fountain-ready.

In its raw state, Fountain is great for first drafts. It’s terrific for collaborating with a writing partner on Google Docs. It’s also incredibly handy to be able to write scenes anywhere.

Ultimately, screenwriters will use another app to finish formatting their scripts. Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter don’t explicitly support Fountain — yet both import the files remarkably well. (That’s why it’s great being a plain text file.) If you feel like writing in Fountain, you don’t have to wait for new apps…

…but [they’re coming](http://fountain.io/apps). Today, we’re announcing the format spec and an SDK so developers can add Fountain to their applications. The format is free and open-source. We want to see an ecosystem of apps and services that handle Fountain.

The road ahead
—

Back when we announced FDX Reader, I got a lot of emails asking, “When are you going to make a screenwriting app?”

Answer: Today. My hope is that we just made a thousand. Fountain turns every text editor into a screenwriting app.

To me, calls for a “Final Draft killer” are hugely misguided. Professional screenwriters will always need apps that can do the heavy lifting when it comes to production: revisions, locked pages, colored pages, etc. The big apps do this well.

But the tools should match the job. Google Docs is much better at collaboration than a dedicated screenwriting app will ever be. Power users of Vim should be able to write in their custom environment.

Fountain is meant to be *generally useful.* I’m excited to see how it becomes *specifically useful* to screenwriters in the months and years ahead.

For now, I’d invite you to read [Stu Maschwitz’s introduction](http://prolost.com/fountain) and then [check out the Fountain site](http://fountain.io).

Warners adds 28 days of hassle

News

In a move that will help absolutely no one, Warners has apparently convinced Netflix to make their site [slightly worse for users](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/01/warner-bros-netflix-deal-includes-delay-in-queues.html):

> Under a new deal between the two companies, Netflix users won’t just have to wait 56 days to rent Warner Bros. movies on DVD. They’ll have to wait 28 days to add the movies to their queues. […]

> Beginning Feb. 1, when the new agreement goes into effect, Netflix customers won’t even be able to add Warner movies to their queues until four weeks after the DVDs go on sale, a knowledgeable person not authorized to speak publicly confirmed. They would then have to wait another four weeks until Netflix starts shipping the discs.

Granted: Netflix would love to get out of the DVDs-by-mail business anyway. But taking away a basic feature that users have come to expect hurts the company’s reputation.

(Maybe that’s why they wanted to be called Qwikster.)

Introducing Bronson Watermarker

Geek Alert, News

bronson iconI’m happy to announce our first-ever Mac app: Bronson Watermarker.

You can find it in the [Mac App Store](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bronson-watermarker/id481867513?mt=12) today.

Bronson does exactly one thing: watermark PDFs. There are other apps that let you do that (including Adobe Acrobat), but none of them are particularly good. They make simple jobs complicated, and they cost a lot more.

Bronson Watermarker also has two features that set it apart:

1. Give it a list of names, and Bronson will create individualized PDFs, ready to print or send.
2. Choose “Deep Burn” and Bronson will embed the watermark so thoroughly it’s never going away.

Watermarks are common in Hollywood, where studios and producers want to make sure screenplays don’t get passed along beyond their intended readers. Bronson Watermarker will save assistants a lot of time and hassle.

But Bronson is good for all sorts of uses beyond screenplays, so we’re aiming for a much wider user base — basically, anyone who needs to send out PDFs to people they don’t entirely trust.

Here’s the video we made about it:

You can read more about the uses for Bronson at the [official site](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/bronson).

The backstory
—-

Like [FDX Reader](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/fdxreader) and [Less IMDb](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/less-imdb), Bronson Watermarker exists because I couldn’t believe someone else hadn’t already made it.

This past year, I needed to individually watermark 40 scripts with actors’ names for a reading in New York. No problem, I thought.

Because I’m a nerd, my first instinct was [Automator](http://www.apple.com/macosx/apps/all.html#automator), the Mac’s built-in batch scripting utility. It has a command for “Watermark PDF documents” with a surfeit of options — angle, offset, scale, opacity — but no ability to actually generate the watermark text. Automator wanted an image to stick on the PDF. I only had a list of names. I was out of luck.

If Automator couldn’t do it, surely a third-party utility could.

After a lot of Googling, I found several Mac apps that looked promising, each letting you type the text for the watermark. Unfortunately, none of them could generate more than one PDF at a time.

So, with deadlines looming, here was my workflow: copy the name from a text file, paste the name, export, rename the file. Repeat forty times. It was inefficient and error-prone.

I vowed never again.

I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew how this missing app should work. That evening, I emailed Nima the details, along with sketches for button and field placement. He sent back the rough version of the app two days later.

And now it’s real and [ready to buy](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bronson-watermarker/id481867513?mt=12) in the Mac App Store.

Props to Nima Yousefi for his speedy coding, and Ryan Nelson for the artwork and icon — and all the animation in the promo video.