Even though Final Draft is the Hollywood industry standard of screenwriting software, that doesn't mean Movie Magic Screenwriter is substandard. In fact, it's the official screenwriting software of the Writers Guild of America East (WGA) and other film organizations. This screenwriting software even won a prestigious Academy Technical Achievement Award. Its user interface isn’t intrusive, and there are many tools to help write and edit a screenplay. Movie Magic Screenwriter receives our TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award.
Movie Magic Screenwriter is fairly easy-to-use screenwriting software that will help you with formatting to Hollywood’s standards. Like any good screenwriting software app worth its salt, it lets you stay focused on the story, characters and three-act structure, while it handles all the “heavy lifting.”
Much like Final Draft, once you start writing, the program will anticipate what you want to do next. This includes selecting a scene heading (such as INT. HOUSE – MORNING, meaning inside of a house in the morning), action, the characters in a scene and the dialogue. While you write, you’ll mostly use the Enter and Tab keys, which bring up the formatting options.
There are also many tools that can be used in the screenwriting software itself, and Movie Magic Screenwriter also includes enough documentation and examples to benefit even the novice scriptwriter so they can easily get started on their screenplay with this screenwriting software.
Many of the tools and features found in Movie Magic Screenwriter are found in other screenwriting software applications. The app will format the script to the proper Hollywood standards, as we mentioned above. It also supports Screenwriter’s Notes (to put in little notations, critiques and the like throughout a script), an index card mode, customizable window layout and more.
On the left-hand side is a fully customizable outline column called NaviDoc, so you can track the progress of the scenes you’re writing. It can get a little overwhelming when you’re first using it, especially once you've written multiple scenes. A scene is created every time you put in a new scene heading, and there can be 100 to 200 scenes in the average feature-length script of around 80 to 120 pages.
If the toolbar across the top and the NaviDoc on the left are too distracting, you can essentially tell Movie Magic Screenwriter to “get out of the way.” You can easily change the layout of the user interface to suit your needs.
Movie Magic Screenwriter’s auto-save feature will automatically keep multiple versions of the script, without having to use “Save As” to create a new document. We recommend using this in case you accidently delete a part of the script.
It also comes with iPartner so you can collaborate over the internet with another writer in real time. There is a built-in dictionary and a thesaurus for quick reference. The application can also import scripts written in Microsoft Word, PDF and rich text formats without too many fixes to get the formatting right – though it doesn't support Final Draft documents. We think the Text-to-Speech feature could prove useful so you can listen as your computer performs the script for you; you'll catch things you wouldn't from just reading your own script.
Movie Magic Screenwriter can create production tracking and breakdown reports for the various crew members to use with scheduling, budgeting and more. These are important features that should be in a great screenwriting software application.
If your script goes into production, or if you’re hired to work as the writer while on the film set, you’ll need to be able to do quick rewrites for the cast and crew, and to organize and keep track of new pages.
In the film industry, they use different colors to designate which pages are the newest ones so the cast and crew are aware of fresh scenes and dialogue. Movie Magic screenwriting software can help you create and organize a multitude of colors while you perform onset rewrites.
You can export the script into a few popular formats, including the Movie Magic Screenwriter format. Others include rich text format, PDF, simple text (for Avid and other compatible video editing software applications) and Screenplay Exchange, which is ideal for importing the script into movie scheduling software, such as Movie Magic Scheduling.
If you’re going to be exporting to a scheduling software program, Movie Magic Screenwriter allows you to tag characters, locations, props, etc., which assistant directors will use for scheduling and script supervisors will use to keep track of items and actors in a scene so there are no continuity problems.
As you know by now, Hollywood has pretty strict formatting rules and guidelines that writers must follow just to get their script noticed. But the specifics of the formatting can change for television, and every show has a different format for writing. If your script isn’t formatted right, the reader will use it as an excuse to stop reading and move onto the next one.
Fortunately, Movie Magic screenwriting software comes with plenty of templates with a variety of screenplay, television script and even novel formats, to ensure your spec script for a sitcom will be formatted right. A spec script is one that’s written on the speculation that you may be able to sell it; you weren’t hired to write the script as an assignment.
Write Brothers, the developers of this screenwriting software, offers a variety of lifetime help and support options that are completely free, including phone and email support, a variety of user manuals and documents to help get you started, a FAQs/knowledgebase page and even fax support.
Phone support for the screenwriting software is available during regular business hours (Pacific), and they’re closed for lunch, weekends and holidays. While we don’t expect them to be available on holidays, limited weekend support and perhaps nights would be great for writers who work outside the company’s normal hours of operation.
Movie Magic Screenwriter is the other industry standard screenwriting software program. It’s easy to get started writing your script, though keeping track of your scenes as you write a feature-length screenplay can be slightly confusing. You may not use all the tools and features, but it’s still a great program to use. The free support is fantastic, but it's limited to their normal business hours.
