Tech Support: How Can I Stop Manually Collating PDFs?

A script coordinator needs header intervention

A script coordinator wrote in with a late-night request: "Help! The boss needs headers that only update on revised pages. On unrevised pages, the headers shouldn't change. How do I do this without manually collating a PDF every time I publish a draft?"

Pour One Out For Wasted Time

Let's pause a moment for all the script coordinators on first season shows. No training. Pushy showrunners. And a 300+ page Final Draft Manual that can't be downloaded.

SCs can be left scrambling to find a way to put together a draft, and until you've hit production, it's been easy to just type a draft's name into the header with each new revision. But then when the first set of blues comes out, your showrunner has a new request: pages that haven't been revised should still say "Production Draft" and only the new, revised pages should say "Blue Pages". And if you've relied on manually adjusting the header with each draft, now every page says Blue Revision. The natural solution seems to be to use Preview or Adobe Pro to manually collate the revised pages from the newest draft into the old PDF. It's straightforward but tedious and time-consuming.

But there's an easy, elegant solution for you, reader. And you're gonna be glad you wrote in.

Header Discipline

Header discipline is another one of those situations where, when it's done right, it's ignored. And when it's done wrong, everyone suddenly has very strong opinions about what the script coordinator does and how well they're doing it.

A perfect header should indicate key information to anyone reading the script: the show name, the episode number, the page number, and when the current page was issued. This last piece, which is our subject in question, is crucial: if the writers are deep in the goldenrods, then a stale page from the production draft is ripe to be reissued. To do it right, you'll wage this war on two fronts.

A Well-Organized Header

First, you'll need to use the tools located in the banner above your header.

The Final Draft 12 and 11 manuals describe these as follows:

(entry not found) Final Draft can't be bothered to explain some of its most important features (that could save SCs some agita), but ScriptCoord.com is open weekends and the 15 hours a day Final Draft isn't. Each of these fields puts a variable in the header that will be updated with the relevant information. The Page #, for example, is replaced with the unique page number that changes for each page.

For our reader's issue, we'll be using the Collated Revisions field. This field automatically updates based on the title of the revision set that the most recently revised round. If a writer hasn't touched this page in four revision sets, then the header will indicate remain stuck indicating the last time it was touched.

Pages vs Drafts

The Collated Revision field is dictated by a setting in revision mode. You can either have a revision that is just the set of revised pages (and will only update the field on those pages) or a full draft (if over 51% of the pages on the script are revised). If you issue a full draft, every page of the Collated Revision field will update to the new draft's title.

In Final Draft 11, it's clear to see where this happens:

In Final Draft 12, a poor description makes it hard to find:

What's misleading is that Final Draft has this labeled as Show On – it's described as a visual setting, like whether or not the edges of the pages reflect the color of the revision set. But rest assured this is A Big Deal™.

Proper Revision Set Names

A judicious SC would observe that the Collated Revision field copies the exact name of the revision. Therefore, unless the show's standard is to include the date as part of the revision's title, our reader would be sure to only use a revision title that exactly matches whether the revision was pages or a full draft, e.g. PRODUCTION DRAFT, BLUE PAGES, PINK DRAFT.

Practice Makes Perfect

Here's how the Collated Revision field works in practice:

Production Draft (all pages white).

Blue Pages (pages are either white or blue) – untouched pages will still indicate "Production Draft" and appear in white; the revised pages will be blue and say "Blue Pages".

Pink Draft (this can happen if there's a clearance or location issue late in the game that pervades through the script) - every page is updated to say Pink Draft.

Yellow Pages - untouched pages will still indicate "Pink Draft" and appear in pink; the new revised pages will be yellow and say "Yellow Pages".

Green Pages - untouched pages from the most recent draft will still indicate "Pink Draft" and appear in pink; untouched pages from the yellow revision will state "Yellow Pages"; the new revised pages will be green and say "Green Pages". Goldenrod Draft – Marduk forbid you get a completely new draft reissued at this stage of the game, but if 51% of the changes have revision marks, you're in Goldenrod Draft mode. Every page is updated to say Goldenrod Draft.

Save Yourself

The Collated Revision field means our reader can take the task of manually collating the drafts off their checklist. But it may also mean sending out a new template to the writers' room. Doing it now, so that every draft from now on have the collated revision field in place and ready to rock, means an SC won't need to spend precious mental bandwidth manually inserting it later. Got a question for tech support? We'd love to answer it.