Write Brothers (http://www.screenplay.com) announces a technological
first: a patent-pending software technology that scans a script
document and identifies critical words, lines or paragraphs that
affect the script’s page count. In a world where a script’s length
can mean the difference between being produced or being tossed in the
trash, Streamline for Movie Magic Screenwriter gives writers a new
and powerful way to save hours when trimming their scripts to
professional standards.
Most writers expend considerable effort to reduce their page counts,
and often have to resort to a laborious manual search to locate edits
that can yield results. Out of desperation they may resort to
“cheating the script”: techniques that involve manipulating
formatting, margins or font point size. These antiquated techniques
are easily detectable by professional script readers and are rarely
employed effectively.
Streamline is the first automated tool to help writers quickly and
honestly trim excess material and reduce their page count. Streamline
can analyze a feature length screenplay in less than a minute, and
display a list of suggested edits that are guaranteed to reduce the
page count.
For example, Streamline may identify that a paragraph of dialogue on
page 11 uses the word “understand.” Shortening that word by two
letters would save the writer two pages — reducing the script from
122 pages to 120 pages. Streamline even suggests acceptable synonyms
to shorten the word. The writer can press one button and replace the
word, instantly shortening the script.
Streamline has five different tests it can apply to a script. It can
analyze the deletion of words, trailing lines, entire paragraphs, and
transitions. There is also a special analysis to see if shortening
character names results in savings pages. Writers have reacted with
unprecedented enthusiasm to Streamline. According to Hans Tobeason,
co-executive producer of TNT’s “Saving Grace,” Streamline is “one of
those game-changing ideas that you can’t believe you lived without.”
“Streamline does something much more important than seamlessly trim
your page count. It trims the time it takes to do it,” says Roger S.
H. Schulman, co-creator and executive producer of “J*O*N*A*S.”
Screenwriter and consultant Skip Press adds, “Streamline helps
unproduced writers do what professionals learn through experience –
economy of words and eloquence of text.”
The first version of Streamline, a plug-in program for the Mac OS X
version of Screenwriter 6, is $39.95 and is available as of Sept. 3,
2008 as a download-only item from www.screenplay.com, as well as
other software dealers that offer downloads. A Windows version is
under development.