Screenwriting with Montage 1.5
Posted by Van Lam on 05/18/08 in Featured, Office, Productivity, Utilities
Budding screenwriters hoping to write the next action-packed blockbuster have a few hurdles to overcome. Besides the obvious creative obstacles, movie screenplays have a strict formatting structure and deviating from it is potentially suicidal for new writers breaking into the industry. Mariner Software’s Montage is a screenwriting application which allows screenwriters to write without worrying about technical formatting rules. Montage takes care of that part for you — you just have to supply the story.
Upon launching Montage, one the most striking aspects of the application you’ll notice is the native Mac interface. I wouldn’t normally bring this up, but it’s notable because most professional screenwriting applications are cross platform and as a result not only look like bad Windows ports, but lack OS X integration with services like the inline dictionary and spell check. Montage has both of these, as well as .Mac integration and Spotlight indexing support.
But Montage isn’t simply a pretty interface. The application has all the expected screenwriting tools you find in competing applications — tools like automatic script formatting, title page support, and return/tab key-based navigation — as well as a few unique ones. For example, Montage has a useful Scene View mode for viewing and editing scripts. Unlike the normal Script View, which emulates how the document looks when printed, Scene View in Montage visually breaks down the script into sections, making it easy to spot where individual scenes begin and end.
Users of other screenwriting programs will be familiar to the other viewing modes available: Outline View organizes a script into scenes for annotation and easy reordering, Character View displays all the dialog and scenes for a certain character, and Location View shows all the scenes of a given location. Extra tools not directly related to screenwriting integrated with Montage include a contacts manager, a tasks to-do list, and a research file depository.
The best unique feature of Montage is the Smart View tool. The tool works like iTunes’ Smart Playlists feature. You dial in certain variables and Montage automatically calls the portions of your script that adhere to the values and displays them. Montage also has a full screen feature for editing and writing — a useful tool noticeably absent in most of it’s competitors.
Key tools which Montage has trouble with are change tracking and page locking. Tracking changes is essential when collaborating with other writers or managing different drafts. Similarly, when going into production, a script is often locked so that subsequent rewrites during production do not change page numbers for existing scenes. Montage has neither of these essential screenwriting features.
Montage is relative newcomer in a field where two giants, Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter, have dominated for over twenty years. To compensate for this, Montage not only supports import of common text files like Rich-Text Format (.rtf), but also Final Draft (.fdr) files. For output, Montage can export MS Word (.doc), PDF, and Final Draft format (.fdr). Sorely absent is HTML export.
My evaluation of the Final Draft support was disappointing. My testing revealed many page synchronization issues, especially when a character’s dialog overlaps onto two pages. The formating inconsistencies are minor when exporting to Final Draft files, and worse with import. The issues are magnified with longer scripts.
The biggest problem with Montage has nothing to do with the application itself. It’s the competition.
Montage costs about $150. It’s costly for a word processor, but somewhat fairly priced compared to other professional screenwriting applications. This is precisely the problem. Montage costs roughly the same as its industry standard competitors, yet does not have the feature set or industry support to warrant its price. Final Draft and Movie Magic ScreenWriter, considered by most to be the industry standards, both retail for about $175. Both may not have the native Mac goodness of Montage, but nonetheless are solid applications with tools that professional screenwriters need and Montage lacks.
For the price-conscious non-professional who can deal with the lack of key features like page lock and change tracking, Montage is even more unappealing. There are a plethora of free or inexpensive solutions that match or beat Montage’s feature set. For example, the open-source Celtx is a cross-platform solution that offers nearly everything Montage advertises for free.
Montage costs $149.95 USD (A downloadable version is also available for $139.95) and is available from Mariner Software.
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