Write Brothers Movie Magic Screenwriter (PC & Mac) Review

Write Brothers Movie Magic Screenwriter (PC and Mac)

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)For years, I used to use Microsoft Word to develop all of my scripts in. While it could be done, it wasn't the best nor the easiest way to do it. I had always put off buying specialized software to do something that but the problem is that I spent more time formatting and paginating my scripts than I did writing.
Finally, I decided to break down and buy scripting software. But before deciding on which one to buy I did a little research on the titles that were currently available. I wanted to make sure I got the best product for the right price. What ultimatly sold me on Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000 was that both the Writers' Guild of America and Project Greenlight both recommend this software.
One of the claims made by the software company is the ability to get up and running right out of the box. I found this to be--for the most part--true. Upon receiving my copy, I was entering my first script in about 30 minutes (including installation time). There are some things that you may need to know, but the software company was intuitive enough to add booklets that contain this information in it so that you didn't have to hunt through the manual.
There are also a nice collection of templates included with the software that allows you to write for both movie and television (like I do). The templates for the TV shows comes in many different flavors (Sci-fi, sit-coms, dramas, etc.) and are even set up in the format used by several different shows.
What I especially appreciated was the fact that Screenwriter 2000 kept track of the names of my characters. I used to have to do this on scratch pads and Post-It notes or I would have to read back in the script to find a name. In Screenwriter 2000, I can call up a list of names to find the one I'm looking for. I'm able to do the same thing with scene heading, so I can keep my scenes in a consistant format.
Since I post some of my work on Zoetrope.com for review by other writers, the fact that I can create an Adobe file (.pdf format) was also of importance to me. While I could use a translation program to turn my Word document into an Adobe file, such translators have their problem and don't always retain the format that you created. With Screenwriter 2000, my Adobe documents come out looking the same as the original file. But this feature wasn't as intuitive as I had thought it would be. I was expecting this feature to be a part of the file exporting system. Instead, it's part of the print function. (You "print" a .pdf file.)
While there are a lot of pros about the software, there were also several cons, which is why I only rated it four stars. One is that this software is set up to installed on both the Mac and the PC from the same box. Becuase of that, they designed the user manual to address both opperating systems by printing it as a flip book. (One side has the instructions for the PC--flip the book over--the other side has the instructions for the Mac.) This means that the index is in the center. If you use an index as often as I do, plan on placing a bookmark there.
Another problem is that not all of the features available to the PC user is available to the Mac user. As of this review, only one feature--the Storyboard Linking--was not available on the Mac. However, this should be of little consiquence to the average user (unless you're a professional writer in Hollywood with a Mac).
Finally, one feature that was touted to me time and again was the voice readback capability. By using a Text-to-Speech engine, you can have your script read back to you, even to the point of assigning different voices to the different characters. It took a little effort to get this feature working on my PC, and when I did it sounded like a room full of Stephen Hawkings reading my screenplay.
Still, as softwares goes, this is possibly the best product out on the market.

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Fully integrated screenplay formatter, word processor and index card system Spell Checker & ThesaurusDrag and Drop EditingExtensive Importing & ExportingScript NotesOptional Foreign Dictionaries - Danish, Dutch, French, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and UK EnglishReal Time FormattingProduction featuresAuto-RecognitionsTab/Enter SimplicityScript Scanning