For Korean I went to the language arts department at the University of Arizona and found some Korean students who provided me with the correct grammar, names, etc. Zhou is her surname and it ALWAYS comes first. The Zhou family was with Mao Zedong on the Long March (and thus are national heroes) and her father was a member of the provincial congress for many years and was an active member of the Communist Party in Liaoning Province. Wrong! And it made her angry because it was obvious that this producer did not know or understand the Chinese culture and/or didn't care. One producer said her name as Ming Fei Zhou. My wife is from the PRC and speaks Mandarin, so she is my expert in Chinese language and names. I have several characters in two of my scripts who speak a few lines in Mandarin and Korean. If you're going to include them, be absolutely sure that you've done your research and the words and names are correct. If your character is a hillbilly like my Ben Kittsmiller, then don't give him words or pronunciations that someone from West Liberty would never say. Minimal use of dialects is easy to understand so don't be afraid of them if they are important to the development of your character. all the time and that's perfectly acceptable. I have one character in my "Escaping Paradise" who is a son of the hills in Eastern Kentucky and he uses y'all, gonna, ain't, etc. Your script must be written in good English with no spelling errors (unless you're writing in some type of dialect, but then be very careful that you don't overdo it - let the actors speak in accents or dialects. She said that they all agree on one thing, however. Producers are people, too, and no two will agree on the perfect format. She has editors to put it into a format that she wants when the film goes into pre-production and all producers that she knows prefer different formats. She said that all the talk about which program is the best is just that, a lot of talk, and she, as a long-time movie and TV producer, told me is that it doesn't matter as long as the script bears some kind of consistent format and is readable. I had a meeting last year with a Lead Producer at Paramount Pictures and we talked at length about the scripts that are submitted to her - and she receives hundreds each week. And it gets better, there's competing and compatible software at every price point right down to zero. A couple of hundred dollars speculation on an entire career - not bad really. At worst it's a tax you have pay as you climb the ladder. That's a bargain compared to most other career choices, especially when you consider so many professional screenwriters like working in Final Draft. I think you need to look at this a little differently, for a couple of hundred dollars you can have no software demands to worry about. A few seem to mix up industry standard and software capability. There are people out there who think Final Draft is somehow special in terms of its programming, it's a shame you've bumped into one. However it is, without doubt, the file standard every screenwriter has to respect because it's so deeply routed into the working process of the industry. Don't be fooled into thinking Final Draft is anything special or the alternatives inferior, it's overpriced and underdeveloped. Michelle, contrary to what's been written above it is possible to format a Word document and export a pdf to script standards, but it is relatively cumbersome to work with and can't be exported to Final Draft format. I'm familiar with screenwriting format standards (thank you, Google and research!) so feel I have a good grasp on how to set margins, indents, sluglines, and so on, but I could be wrong. Anyone know which is accurate, or does it just depend on the producer's/agent's preference for reading-script submissions? Asking because I do have MS Word and Adobe Acrobat, and am not a multi-millionaire, so don't feel like popping down the $100-plus for a Final Draft install if I really don't have to. However, I've heard recently from an independent producer that Final Draft (and to some extent CeltX, which as I understand is a lower-grade stepchild of Final Draft) is the ONLY admissible format that producers and agents will accept. I see calls for screenplays in which producers and agents seek scripts in either PDF or RTF (Rich Text Format), which can both be generated via a Word doc source. Hi all, I'm trying to resolve an informational conflict I'm coming up against re: submitting screenplays in Final Draft vs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |