Need font darker than dark courier, but similar to it.

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Don - 12 Jul 2005 00:05 GMT

Movie scripts must be submitted with a Courier 12 font, but with my
Brother 1435 laser printer, even the Dark Courier is not dark enough and
I've made all the adjustments I can with the printer. I'm told it's much the
same using courier with any laser printer. I don't know why, but the Arial
font is much darker
than Dark Courier. And so much better, all around. How I wish I could use
it. My question . . . Does anyone know if there are any fonts similar to
Courier that might print out as dark as arial?

(The Courier font is a typewriter legacy and is positively the worst font in
the world for scripts--or anything else, in my opinion. Yet they insist on
it even as it
destroys their eyes. )

Many thanks for any help offered.

Signature

Thanks, Don

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Bob Buckland ?:-) - 12 Jul 2005 02:24 GMT

Hi Don,

What are you basing your information on for 'darkness' of
the Courier Font? Courier New is accepted by more than
a few professionals/organizations
http://www.oscars.org/nicholl/format.html
or the Writer's Guild of America (WGA) handbook.
"Professional Writer's Teleplay/Screenplay Formats "

and you may find it looks darker if you reduce the print
resolution setting in your laser from 600 dpi to 150 dpi
and you may also find that you can use a copier (although
they're pretty good now too) to make your courier font
look a bit more full. The size and face of the font is
important. As a rule of thumb, one sixty line (max)
page of Courier formatted script work is seen as approximately
1 minute of screen time (be sure to note if the guide you're
following asks for pitch or font Courier 12 pitch = 10 point
Courier 10 pitch = 12 point).

There are also dedicated script preparation programs such as
http://www.finaldraft.com/products/fd-features.php4
with their own fonts but their success can also be based on
opinion. You may also find that in some cases scripts
prepared in Final Draft or MovieMagic may not be as accepted.

Using HTML to create scripts (CSS [style sheet]) standards
allows things to be formatted and indented fairly easily with
sites such as this one, for example
http://scriptbuddy.com/products/
where you can create your script in your browser and produce
a PDF for printing.

You may be asked to submit a .doc file of your script at
which point you have little control if the final font used
is a substitute for your font.

Courier (fixed pitch) fonts are still used to help with
distribution of change pages for scripts on live sets and
quick read (i.e. no 'thinking' or 'noticing' just absorb
the text of the new changes).

May you be successful enough to get your first blue pages :)
(Blue is the first 'rewrite' color used for working scripts.)

=========
Movie scripts must be submitted with a Courier 12 font, but with my
Brother 1435 laser printer, even the Dark Courier is not dark enough and
I've made all the adjustments I can with the printer. I'm told it's much the
same using courier with any laser printer. I don't know why, but the Arial
font is much darker
than Dark Courier. And so much better, all around. How I wish I could use
it. My question . . . Does anyone know if there are any fonts similar to
Courier that might print out as dark as arial?

(The Courier font is a typewriter legacy and is positively the worst font in
the world for scripts--or anything else, in my opinion. Yet they insist on
it even as it
destroys their eyes. )

Many thanks for any help offered.

Signature

Thanks, Don <<
--
Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

Reply to this Message

Don - 12 Jul 2005 03:33 GMT

Hi Bob. Many thanks for your very comprehensive response to my query, and
for your best wishes, as well. I never thought of the copy idea, since I
usually print things out myself. Great suggestion! I'll go that way and get
them to darken the print.

I'm used to novel manuscripts using Arial and when I recently produced a
screenplay in New Courier, it looked positively anemic, compared to Arial. I
then reduced my resolution to 300 dpi, the lowest for my Brother 1435 laser
printer, and I turned the "save toner" function off, but it made no
appreciable difference. I then found the Dark Courier font (12 point
setting) and it was definitely better, but still not good enough--in my
estimation. However, I'll have to use it, I guess. In the course of my
ferreting about with this problem I received the impression that others have
encountered it--especially those with laser printers.

It just seemed to me that for spec scripts truly exact word counts can't
matter that much and, in any case, should count for less than ease of
reading. But they who must be obeyed make the rules and rule one, it would
seem, is, at any cost, to preserve the time-honoured Courier font.

Signature

Thanks again for all the time you spent on my question.

> Hi Don,
>
[quoted text clipped - 57 lines]
>
> Many thanks for any help offered.

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Suzanne S. Barnhill - 12 Jul 2005 17:05 GMT

> It just seemed to me that for spec scripts truly exact word counts can't
> matter that much and, in any case, should count for less than ease of
> reading.

Not to mention that inserting a NumWords field would give an exact word
count, anyway.

Signature

Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

> Hi Bob. Many thanks for your very comprehensive response to my query, and
> for your best wishes, as well. I never thought of the copy idea, since I
[quoted text clipped - 77 lines]
> >
> > Many thanks for any help offered.

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