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Below is a link to my review of Mark Lyon's script Thistle. When you open the file and roll your cursor over the highlighted portions you'll see my notes.
All it requires is Adobe Reader X (free). I thought others at SS might like this. I wouldn't want it to replace our on-line reviews, more like giving my detail review notes.
I learned of this from Gary a couple of months ago, and it gets a HUGE thumbs up from me. Not only is it great for reviewing someone else's work, but it's really helpful in taking notes on your own work.
If you like what you saw above, here are a few tips.
It only works on a copy of the PDF saved to your computer. It will not work on the online SS copy.
The Adobe program is pretty straightforward. To start, use the highlighter tool to mark which areas you want to comment on. Click on the highlighted part and a sticky note automatically appears. Fill it out.
There is a comments button in the upper right hand corner that will show you a list of your comments along the right-hand margin. If you select the comment you want to find on the script it will take you to that portion of the script.
I've not been able to print a list of the comments. They do print on a separate page when you print the PDF file but it’s only the comments for the prior page.
You can change the color highlighting. And you can change the name of the reviewer. (Highlight properties toolbar)
You can change the font of your comments. You will have to go into document properties to change that.
If the program won't let you mark the PDF, you likely have security restrictions that you have to change in document properties.
The help portion of Adobe is very good. I'm not an expert, but if you have any questions I'll try to answer them here.
Bert reviewed something for me like this about a year ago. I did like it, although his comments never saw the board. It's half and half for me. And for the reviewer.
When we spend time reading and reviewing a script, we all would like our comments to be seen. In all honesty, I think that helps the writers here target glowing problems in their script.
If I asked a friend here to read something in private before it's thrown to the wolves... I love these kind of comments. Other then that, I'm pretty much thumbs down on it.
The idea is not to replace comments, James, though I guess there is a risk of that tendency. When I am reading someone's script, and not using this, sometimes I see little errors and I don't bother pointing them out in comments, as it's way to time consuming if there are a lot. But it's easy to just highlight. So you really do get a much more thorough read and review this way. I generally use it for private reads, not for just reading something posted, although I recently did that with Brett's script and left a lot of notes. I was a little more open with the notes knowing they were private, as well.
I have NitroPDF, another free prog which allows this sort of thing. Find it useful when reading longish scripts, making notes to remind me of thoughts that occur.
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