KIT Scenarist
Happy Sunday everybody! I have just finished another episode for my podcast series, Boston Harbor Horror Presents, with another scriptwriting application I wanted to review for you. As a reminder, I AM NOT a professional reviewer by any means, and I am basing my review on only the formatting functionality that I’ve used in all the different apps I’ve tried. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get down to business!
From their website:
“KIT Scenarist is a program for creating screenplays which oriented at international standards in the field of film production. The program is a full-featured studio for creating stories from the birth of the idea and before the transfer of the script to production.”
KIT Scenarist is a Russian-based screenwriting application developed by Dimka Novikov Labs. It is free to download and use, and offers paid cloud service to aid in online collaboration for fairly reasonable prices. There are several promising features, like the mind map, that I may delve into next season. I’m a chaotic mess, so I haven’t transcribed my notes into a digital format unless I need to share them with someone. I’m a fan of writing pen on paper, so the majority of my non-Internet information for my show and writings tend to be scattered in Moleskines on my desk and in my bag.
But I digress.
The interface is clean and easy to use. Like Arc Studio Pro, it’s default mode is white text on a dark grey background, which I’m a fan of. Dark mode for the win! For testing purposes, I exported a script from Llama Drama Studio in fountain and imported it into KIT Scenarist and it required nearly no additional modification on my part. This time, I started writing a fresh episode in KIT Scenarist, as opposed to finishing one I had earlier started with Arc Studio Pro. The typing speed was flawless with no lag between keystrokes and the type appearing on screen (an issue I experienced with Arc Studio Pro), the transitions from Scene Heading, Character, Action, Dialogue, etc. was easy to manage and navigate and I really liked how each scene was automatically loaded onto a sidebar to the left for ease of reference. One feature I particularly liked with this application is that it automatically gives you a run-time for the script in the top right corner of the application. You can also choose to add other counters, so I checked the boxes for pages and word count as well. After finishing my writing, I’m at the top of page twenty, with 3,674 words and a runtime of 19 minutes and 25 seconds, which for an audio drama producer is great as it gives you a good general idea of how long your episodes are going to be. I haven’t found any faults as of yet, although my focus is more on the automatic formatting and ease of use of an application versus tons of bells and whistles. The closest items of a negative note for me is spending money for the collaboration within the app (although the cost is small in comparison to others), and the base of the app being in Russia. Nothing against the Russian people, but being U.S. based myself, I’m wary and hesitant of providing any information of a financial or personal nature to that nation for…reasons.
Geopolitics aside, I think KIT Scenarist is a great program for AD scriptwriting and I look forward to utilizing its other features in my next project.
Price: Free, cloud services in order to collaborate are paid per month of use, i.e. $4.99 USD for one month, $9.99 USD for two months and so on up to $52.99 USD for one year.
Website: https://kitscenarist.ru/en/index.html