Adobe hopes to streamline all of the usual options you’ve come to expect from a screenwriting program, listening to their customers during this beta. Intelligent typing and element types, as well as character recognition and location tabs will become simple and standard. This will keep you writing, rather than worrying about proper script formatting. My biggest hope is that the online writing capabilities become a ‘real time’ application so that co-writing with someone becomes a seamless integration. Imagine talking to your writing partner over iChat or Skype, and making script changes as you meet...while you are in The Netherlands. Other than that, I think an additional thing that would truly set Story apart from other similar screenwriting programs will be if Adobe adds other supporting programs within Production Premium that will allow producers to create call sheets, mini-sides, AD reports, basically every possible production report you might need, using the information gleaned from your script’s metadata.
Color-coding shows which actors are in each scene, quickly and conveniently.
As of the date of this article, the beta continues, and you should definitely give it a try. Go to http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/story/ and sign up. Within minutes, you’ll be checking out the program. They say a small group of people can still change the world, so make sure and share your comments with the Adobe Story forum. Help this program be the best it can be! There is no set release date or price just yet, but with Adobe CS5 likely in the near future, one would assume they are planning on dropping it as a component of their Suite. If built and supported correctly, Adobe Story could be the beginning of a truly cost effective set of total production tools, commencing with the most important part of any film...the script!
A.J. Wedding is a graduate of Western Michigan University and has won festival awards for his first feature film, "Pop Fiction". As a writer/director, he has won several awards for his short films, and recently garnered worldwide distribution for a feature film titled “The Disappearance of Jenna Matheson” releasing this year. His hit web series, “Infamous” created an instant fanbase, and spawned interest from networks to create a tv series based on it. A.J. currently works with The Production Green, directing and editing commercials as well as developing his next feature film, "Junior Crew."
