Revisions and Reports

Fade In Professional Screenwriting Software includes extensive tools for managing a screenplay through the entire rewriting and preproduction process.



Revisions

Screenplay revisions are color-coded. The shooting script upon which the initial preproduction breakdown is based is printed on white paper. Subsequent revisions during preproduction and/or production are customarily printed on, in order: blue, pink, yellow, green, goldenrod, buff, salmon, cherry, and tan. The first set of revisions are referred to as the "blue pages" the second as "pink pages", etc.

To change the revision level, go to Production > Revisions and select the desired revision color. The available revision names and colors can be modified for the current document, and saved/loaded for use in other documents.

Any subsequent editing of the document will then result in that text being marked with a "*" in the margin, and that page being flagged as the appropriate revision color. Depending on the setting of Preferences > User Interface > Revisions, the revised text may optionally appear in the appropriate color and/or the onscreen page color may optionally reflect the revision color.

Revisions can be unmarked, in which case the changed text remains but it is no longer flagged as being revised. The "*" will be removed, and the revision page color will be reset to its previous value.



Locking Pages and Scenes

Locking pages and scenes is also key to the preproduction process. Once the script has been broken down, it is necessary that page and scene numberings don't change, i.e., that "INT. CHARLIE'S OFFICE - NIGHT" is always scene number 124 on page 82, regardless of how many scenes or pages are inserted or deleted along the way.

Page numbers are locked using Production > Lock Page Numbers. Scene numbers are locked using Production > Lock Scene Numbers. Page and scene numbers must be showing in order to lock them.

Once locked, numbering is frozen for all existing pages or scenes. Inserting, for instance, a new scene between 10 and 11 will number it 10A. Numbering can be re-locked to freeze that subsequently inserted 10A so that inserting a new scene between 10A and 11 will result in 10A1.

Locked page numbers or scene numbers can be manually edited or automatically renumbered from a given number.

Page and scene numbering can use multiple numbering modes:

1AB - 1, 1A, 1AA, 1AB, 1B, 2, ...
The standard numbering scheme. Pages/scenes added before locked pages/scenes are always given an additional letter.

1A2 - 1, 1A, 1A1, 1A2, 1B, 2, ...
Pages/scenes added before locked pages/scenes are given an additional alternating letter and number.

AB2 - 1, A2, AA2, AB2, B2, 2, ...
Some production personnel prefer to put the added page/scene number before the original numerical page/scene number.

BA2 - 1, A2, AA2, BA2, B2, 2, ...
Similar to AB1 numbering, except that subsequent additions are always made to the front of the page/scene number.

Dialogue Numbering

Dialogue can also be numbered and locked; this is most commonly done for animation production where each line must be separately and specifically referenced throughout the production process.

Numbering and locking dialogue is done similarly to pages and scenes, although the numbering scheme is somewhat different. Instead of using the page/scene numbering modes, dialogue numbering uses a basic sequential numbering scheme: 1, 2, 3...100, 101, 102. You can choose from a number of formatting options to display dialogue numbers.

Locked dialogue numbers can be edited and renumbered as you would pages or scenes.



Reports

The application has they ability to generate a number of different reports to aid in script breakdown, under Production > Reports.

Scene Report
A detailed breakdown of every scene in the script, giving the scene number, scene heading, page number, length in eighths of a page, and number of dialogues by character. The first time a speaking character appears in the report, that character's name is formatted in bold.

Cast Report
A list of each character in the script giving the number of total dialogues, speaking scenes, and total scenes for each. The report can be sorted alphabetically or in script order.

Dialogue Report
Consolidates all the dialogue spoken by a specific character into a single report.

Lineage Report
Similar to a Cast Report, but summarizes the dialogue spoken by each character by total words and lineage, i.e., blocks of 50 letters (including punctuation, etc., rounded up).

Location Report
A list of each location in the script, broken down into interior (INT.), exterior (EXT.), etc. and listed by scene, giving the scene number and page number for each.

Notes Report
A summary of notes in the document, giving the scene number and page number of each.

Synopsis Report
A summary of the script's synopsis content, broken down by scene number and page number.

Element Report
Creates a custom report of one or more selected element types.

Statistics Report
Presents some interesting and/or useful information about script and scene length,

word usage, etc.

Reports can be printed or saved as HTML or as .csv (comma-separated values) for import into other applications.