Speaker 1: This video will be reviewing a few of the very basics that you need to know about in Final Draft screenwriting program. We're going to be looking at the action line, how to make characters speak, the difference between VO and off-camera or off-screen, parentheticals, and exporting that PDF or the FDX file formats. So I've got Final Draft open. I'm creating a new document. It opens up into this very basic plain page. You see it says Untitled Screenplay up at the top. I'm going to give it a title and a name, and I'm going to give it a title page right now just to keep it simple for us so that we always know what script we're working on. In this case, let's call it My Favorite Story, and my typing is so good. So My Favorite Story, it's always capitalized. It's always underlined. It kind of does it for you as long as you don't delete it, but you're not going to be marked down or, you know, if it's not written by your name. And then down lower on the page, you will notice that it has an address and phone number area. I would never include my address on anything because we don't need to. I would put either an email address for them to reach you, or you would put your representative's name, like your manager or your agent, that kind of information. You would include that there. And then, you know, depending on what the script is for, you might include the draft version you're on. So we can save it, and I think that you can actually just close it without saving that, and the screen and the cover page automatically saves. But now we're going to save the script, calling it My Favorite Story, and of course wherever you want to save it, you know. So right now we're going to do it on the desktop. Save that baby. Okay, so look, I've got My Favorite Story, and you can see that it's an FDX, which is a final draft document, right? I'll show you later how to change it to a PDF in case you're going to share it with somebody, but you can share the FDX document with other final draft users and send it out that way, especially when you go into production. So the first thing that happens is Fade In. I didn't have to capitalize Fade In. It does it automatically, and it does the little semicolon automatically. And again, it automatically drops you down to your action, to your slug line, or your scene heading, right? And your scene heading is always interior or exterior, and that gives everybody in the film information about where your scene takes place. Because remember, this is just the beginning. This is the blueprint for the rest of the story, and people need to know. Your cameramen, your lighting people, your actors, everybody needs to know where they're going to be filming, because eventually we have to break it all down and create a budget and figure out how to shoot it, right? So right now, we're on our slug line or scene heading. We're interior, and we're going to type in the location. You're not going to type all this junk that I just did, but I'm trying to show you what that is. So we're going to make the interior, I think, a bathroom. And I think I'm going to go with a horror genre here, because a bathroom can be really creepy. So I give it a space, a dash, another space, and I just typed in the D for day, and my drop-down list comes up automatically. Just use day or night. Don't worry about dawn and dusk or other descriptors right now. Just stick with day and night. You can also use N, and then night comes up. Hit return, and that drops you down to a line where you're ready to start typing. Now, this is your action line. This is where you start adding description and information. And since we've got characters doing things, we call it an action line, right? All right, so now I'm going to type for you. I'm going to come up with a story here. So I'm going to start with the first visual that I think the audience should see in order to establish the tone and the genre. I want them, I'm not going to describe the whole room, because that's too much information. We only have 90 pages. I want them to describe the whole room. I want them to take in the first bit of information with this first visual, and I want them to get what's going on in this place, what this film is going to be like, what they can expect. So I'm one of those writers who I'm thinking it out, and I'll type a little bit and then go back and delete real quick until I find the words I'm looking for to describe the I try not to use a cliche, but often sometimes, you know, I'll often go there and start with cliche and just start with something really simple to get it out of my head. You know, it's taking place in a bathroom. It's at night. There are dirty tiles, ancient grime, not fit for human use. All right, this is a not a room that I want to be in, and I'm hoping everybody gets that. Now I'm going to introduce my lead character, or at least the character here, because we want to connect with a human being because they're the ones doing the action. So my character's name the first time I introduce them is always capitalized, right? Now I'm going to include her age, and I will come back and give her a description, but I'm not quite sure how to describe her yet. So we could put a placeholder, but for right now, I'm going to just leave an age because I plan to give her a little more physical description in the next couple of lines as I show her in action. So rather than saying, well, she's got long blonde hair, but it's dirty and it's in her eyes. I'm going to use that as part of the scene. So Sally, 19, crawls into the room. Her hands outstretched, grasps for the wall. Her dirty hair hangs in her eyes. I'm trying to paint this picture of this lost person who's been in this house. We're not really sure how long, and she's under pressure, and we're causing her, we're really trying to make it difficult for her. I like to capitalize big sound effects so that the reader recognizes that. So now we need somebody to say something. All you have to do is hit tab, and that tab will take you to the center of the screen where you can type your character's name in. You do not have to hit caps. It automatically formats for you. So I typed her name in, but let's say I want to go up and add this other line. So I can just go up, return, and add a line in there of action. So I put, she groans from the pipes, no water. She pushes her hair from her face, and we finally see the fear etched in her eyes, gaunt cheekbones. When she finally sees a reflection in the mirror, she starts to cry. And before she notices, we see it. Behind her in the shadows, a black shape slowly creeps towards her. She's not sure what it is, but she's trying to We see it. Behind her in the shadows, a black shape slowly creeps towards her. I love dashes. I'm a big dash freak. You don't have to be. I just think they keep the action moving without having to stop every time at a period. It's kind of like the way I like to drive. You know, who really needs all the stop signs, right? It kind of just stops the action. No, I stop. Most of the time I do. No, that's what we need Sally to say. No, maybe she'll say something else more interesting when you type it. And then I hit return. Now, most people don't speak to themselves, right? They naturally talk to somebody else. So it gives you the chance to add your next character, which is the creature. And then we hit return. We type in the creature's dialogue. But let's say you can see we've got character up here. We've got parenthetical, dialogue, a lot of other stuff that we don't use that often. So kind of stick to the top right now until you get really familiar and comfortable with everything that final draft does. But this is just the basics. So right now I'm on an action line, right? But I wanted to add Sally speaking. I could have hit tab. I was showing you another option of going up and hitting character. Okay, now Sally's going to get cheeky here. So now we're going to keep it going because I want to show you Sally's going to go somewhere else, right? So she's going to run from the room and into. I'm going to give us a new slug line and I go or a scene heading and I'm going to use the scene heading drop down. It will automatically format that line for you, right? Again, I'm interior hallway. I give it the hallway name because once you put the information in once, it will always recognize that you have that location in there, but I'm putting it in for the first time. So it doesn't recognize hallway yet. You know, space dash night return gives me the action line. Sally bangs into a wall and nearly falls. Obviously she's running scared because that's what happens when you wind up in a nasty bathroom as she runs and screams down the dark passage. All right, good. Still got the tone and the genre going, right? It should be a little bit scary. You should be able to see some of this. It's more important that you see it. Then I explain what the walls look like or what kind of carpets on the floor or if Sally's fingernails were done. Let wardrobe and makeup and your production design people do their job and give them a chance to create that. You as the writer create the story and that's the blueprint. It doesn't include everything. It's a really basic. If you can get the story, right? You're, you're knocking it out of the ballpark right there, but I want to show you some other options and things that you can do here, right? So you'll use parentheticals and you'll use the, a lot of people ask what the voiceover is as opposed to the off screen or off camera. What's the difference there? And so I went by the character's name. I typed in the parenthetical and this, these options come up VO off screen, off camera, voiceover for VO is when somebody tells us the story over the action or they're not really there. It's like they're remembering the story and off screen or off camera is the, the person's there, but we don't see them. So we can hear them, is the person's there, but we don't see them. So we can hear them, but we don't see them. So Sally's no is a good off screen. If I hit return, it creates a space. So I just delete that space. So now, um, let's finish this out. Cause I've shown you what off screen is. I'm going to give the creature an option here to do some voiceover. So now say that we're watching the creature as he's dragging her down the hallway. And this is what he's saying. And our next scene would be the creature giving us part of their life story, right? It's like the creature is telling the story. So most of the time they escape, but not always. Once upon a time, I let them go after a good scare, but now I'm just tired of being nice. So now we know it's the creature story and he's going to be telling it. Oh, I'm going to show you a parenthetical, one more way to use a parenthetical. All right. It's beneath a character's name. And this is an example of, um, how you might want something read or how you imagine that line being delivered. Right. And that would go underneath the character's name. And, uh, we're telling our actor or whoever is reading the script. She's going to say it like she knows who this is. So it would be more like anybody, but you, Oh my gosh, you know, whatever. Anybody, but you. All right. I haven't had a, uh, I'm not ready to do any acting for you. Sorry. Anybody, but you. All right. I've shown you a parenthetical use underneath the name to show an actor or to give an actor a direction. I've shown you how to do the voiceover and off screen log line or slug lines. We're going to save it. You've got the title page. We've already saved it. We're going to hit save again, because we want to do that. We could save it as a PDF. All right. If we wanted to send this out to somebody. So like when you get ready to submit this to a competition or to give it to somebody, you would, uh, you would save it as a PDF and send it in that format. Otherwise you would save it as this final draft and share it with somebody if you needed to. And there it is. All right. I hope that helps. Uh, if you have any questions, let me know. If this was helpful and you think that you might be interested in using Celtics or UmiScript or some of the other, uh, free screenwriting programs, uh, definitely subscribe and I'll be posting some of those in the very near future. Thanks for checking this out.