Final Draft

Final Draft is a screenwriting software designed to assist screenwriters, filmmakers, producers, and writers new to Final Draft in creating scripts. According to the vendor, Final Draft provides a range of features tailored specifically for the needs of professionals in the film and entertainment industry. Whether used by individual writers or larger production teams, Final Draft aims to streamline the screenwriting process and support the realization of creative visions.

Key Features

Powerful Story Planning: Final Draft 12 offers a set of tools for brainstorming, visualizing, outlining, reporting, tagging, collaborating, and customizing the writing environment. According to the vendor, the enhanced Beat Board™ provides a customizable and visual space to organize ideas, plot points, character arcs, research, or location ideas. The Outline Elements & Outline Editor™ facilitate high-level outlining and script organization.

Streamlined Writing & Editing Tools: According to the vendor, Final Draft offers features such as Night & Focus Mode to reduce eye strain and distractions during writing. The Track Changes feature keeps a record of edits, and the Real-Time Collaboration feature enables simultaneous collaboration with writing partners. The Import PDF feature allows for the conversion of PDFs into fully editable Final Draft files.

Easier Formatting: Final Draft aims to simplify formatting tasks, allowing users to focus on the story and characters. The Format Assistant ensures professional formatting, and the Reformat Tool speeds up the process of importing different file types. Automatic Backup Folder provides automatic file backups.

Agile Production: According to the vendor, Final Draft includes Revision Mode for marking and reviewing changes throughout the production process. The Lock Pages feature ensures that revisions do not affect page numbers. Customizable watermarks can be added to PDFs and printed pages for script protection. The Tags Mode enables powerful reporting by tracking customizable story elements and character traits.

Enhanced Beat Board™: The Beat Board™ provides a customizable, visual space to organize ideas, plot points, character arcs, research, or location ideas. According to the vendor, beats can contain stylized text and images and can be connected using Flow Lines and color-coded for easy reference. Beats can also be sent directly to the script for easy access.

Outline Elements & Outline Editor™: The Outline Elements and Outline Editor™ transfer the Beat Board™ to the Outline Editor for high-level outlining and script organization. Multiple lanes can be used to organize the screenplay's structure, and the size of beats can be adjusted for a bird's eye view of the script. The Outline can be shown in the script for easy access, and unique indents allow for planning structure on multiple levels.

ScriptNotes™: The ScriptNotes™ feature allows users to add comments to the script as ideas come to them, with flags appearing on the page for easy reference.

Night & Focus Mode: According to the vendor, Night & Focus Mode reduces eye strain and eliminates distractions during writing, providing a more focused and comfortable writing experience.

Import PDF: The Import PDF feature enables the conversion of a PDF into a fully editable Final Draft file, making it easy to work with existing scripts or documents.

Real-Time Collaboration: According to the vendor, Real-Time Collaboration allows simultaneous collaboration with writing partners on both the script and the Beat Board™, making it easy to collaborate and share ideas in real-time.