A script coordinator walks a thin line
An SC wrote to us in a moment of desperation: "My boss made revisions in the wrong draft and the AD's screaming they need revisions ASAP. This is going to take forever and I can't ask the showrunner to rewrite it. What am I supposed to do?"
Welcome to Hell
Ah, the perils of working with adult children with short tempers. Obviously, you want what's best for your show - otherwise, you'd be working at a job that pays a living wage and treats you with a modicum of respect. But when your showrunner makes revisions in the wrong file, they put you on the defensive. Now you have to work to protect the person who, at best, made a huge mistake in a critical moment or, at worst, is too inexperienced to appreciate what you do and the workflow of being in charge of a writers' room. You, my dear SC, get to bail them out, against a clicking tock, and for scale. But if the showrunner feels like they're being blamed for the delay, you'll lose any goodwill you've accumulated. It's a delicate place to be. But we see you, SC.
Damage Control
If you haven't burned down the office by this point, you want to make a show of being a good team player. Send an email to anyone waiting on tenterhooks for a new draft to let them know there's a delay. And when you respond to your showrunner, you'll be expected to use the passive voice to save face: "Hey boss! Looks like revisions were made in an outdated draft. It'll take me some time to untangle this. I can get back to you with an ETA shortly." Of course, a wise script coordinator should always underpromise and overdeliver.
But now to the task at hand. You have a few ways to rectify the cosmic wrong before you. Which method you opt to go, however, is up to you. The easier option is to: 1. Retype Revisions Into the Most Recent Work In Progress (WIP)
Take a moment to look at the problematic file in front of you. Consider that there you have every revision that's supposed to go out. Pull the two scripts up side by side and everywhere you see a star in the problematic file, you know something needs updating in your WIP. It's easy to see where the additions are. But if something's been deleted, you'll only see a star to guide your way. You'll have to compare a starred sentence in the problem draft to its corresponding sentence in the WIP and revise accordingly.
The problems with this method include adding your own typos when transcribing (or copy/pasting) the revised material in the new draft and overlooking a random star indicating deleted material. If you want to cover your bases and are ready for a true challenge, then:
2. Use ScriptCompare
You'll have to dig into your archives to accomplish this. First, you need the file your boss used before they made their revisions - it's probably a WIP in your outbox. Open that file and go to Tools > Script Compare. (Script Compare is counterintuitive in that you need to have the old version of a file open, open the tool there, then compare it to the newer file.) It will prompt you to select a second file – choose the showrunner's problematic file.
This new file you receive (that means three open on your screen now) will show all the removed revisions in red strike-through and additions in blue.
Use this to double-check that the revisions you've manually entered cover everything. This is easiest with an extra monitor (or computer) – one opened to the comparison file, and one opened to the file you're revising.
The Shame Game
Most writers don't enjoy having their mistakes pointed out, especially when those mistakes affect others. If you make them feel like they did something wrong (even when they did), they'll get defensive and deflect it back on you — they couldn't possibly be at fault, so it's the script coordinator's fault that they didn't have the right draft available. Or they didn't know to use that draft. Or the right draft didn't magically open on their computer when they opened Final Draft. There's value in learning when to deploy the passive voice - "you revised the wrong draft" makes someone responsible for the mistake, but "rewrites were added to the wrong draft" acknowledges the problem without attributing fault. It may feel like an obvious bit of manipulation from your perspective. Still, like most negotiating methods, most methods go undetected when they appeal to the subconscious in a way they like. Good luck, script coordinator. Got a question for tech support? We'd love to answer it.
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