Final Draft Blog
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5 Screenwriting Takeaways: 'Santa Claus Conquers the Martians'
Did you ever wish there was a Christmas film in which Santa Claus is kidnapped by Martians, rocketed off to Mars, and inevitably gives everyone on the planet the Christmas spirit?
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It Builds Character Part III: Character choices and going beyond top level actions
Writing teacher William Zinsser describes creativity as having levels, or orders. The first idea you get is referred to as first order, the second is referred to as second order, and so on. Zinsser encourages his students to think beyond first order ...
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5 Screenwriting Takeaways: Sorkin’s ‘Being the Ricardos’ focuses on Lucille Ball’s most stressful week
I Love Lucy and its follow-up The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour were such landmark programs that despite the final episode airing over 60 years ago, and the likelihood that the majority of Americans have probably never watched an episode, there are memorable...
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5 Screenwriting Takeaways: Jane Campion makes an anti-cowboy masterpiece with ‘The Power of the Dog’
American cowboy movies come with much swagger, often violence, and usually plenty of guns. Jane Campion’s newest, The Power of the Dog, however, is a taught thriller with often disturbing imagery, but almost none of the above. Instead, it centers aro...
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5 Screenwriting Takeaways: ‘House of Gucci’ soap opera based on true story
Patrizia has grand ambitions. From the first moments she appears on screen, the audience knows that she’s itching to escape the confines of her current situation. It’s just by happenstance that she soon meets a young man at a party named Maurizio, wh...
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5 Screenwriting Takeaways: How the final season of 'Pen15' encapsulates the existential crisis that is growing up
Pen15 entered the scene with a huge hook: 30-something actors would play middle schoolers, surrounded by actual middle schoolers. Yet creators and stars Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle quickly make you forget the hook as their performances are so engros...
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5 Screenwriting Takeaways: How Kenneth Branagh turns his tumultuous childhood in Belfast into a personal narrative
Stories of children navigating their way through tumultuous times can give fresh perspective to the realities of the world. In Belfast, the audience gets to see the world at the beginning of the three-decade-long civil war between unionists who wante...
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5 Screenwriting Takeaways: ‘tick, tick...BOOM!’ hits a little harder in the wake of Sondheim's death
Jonathan Larson (played by a pitch-perfect Andrew Garfield) and Stephen Sondheim (played by an empathetic Bradley Whitford) were two pillars of the musical theater world. The main difference: Larson was robbed of his chance to be as prolific as Sondh...
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5 Screenwriting Takeaways: ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ is a fun romp with a heartfelt core
The premise of the show is simple: Four girls are assigned to room together at the fictional liberal arts Essex College in Vermont — and they could not be more different. Yet, when they learn to listen to each other they find more common ground than ...
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What’s new in Final Draft 13?
WRITING GOALS &
PRODUCTIVITY STATS
Set goals and get valuable insights to take your work to the next level
TYPEWRITER
A new typewriter-like view option improves your focus
EMOJI
Craft more realistic onscreen text exchanges and make your notes more emotive
And so much more, thoughtfully designed to help unleash your creativity.
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