The New Go-to Movie Production Tool

DJ Caruso, director of “I am Number Four”, in an interview, talks openly about how the iPad is now his go-to production tool, using it to edit storyboards, reference the script, and research locations to act out certain scenes.  Caruso says he does not even carry a paper script around with him anymore.
In a recent project for grad school, I worked on a remake of a popular desktop script writing software, Final Draft for the iPad.  In speaking with script supervisors and writers, it was clear how much the entire production staff relied on the hard copy script in both preproduction, when numerous copywriters sit together cranking out scripts, as well as when they are in production running through the scenes.    Updated scripts and script inserts are printed out daily and handed out to the entire staff, which is far from being environmentally friendly.
One issue my team confronted was how to translate the current process, which was incredibly manual and relied heavily on hardcopies, to a more digital and streamlined process.  Currently, staff takes notes directly on the hard copy and a staff member transfers the edits to the digital version, and prints out the changes for the team.   The biggest problem we needed to solve was how to ensure all of the notes are captured similarly to the way they add notes on the hardcopy.  For example, some staff write notes up the side of the page reflecting on the scene, where as other notes may be contextual and word changes. To handle this problem, we investigated the integration of a stylus to capture notes and adding the notes to the master copy in the cloud where all staff can access the master version.
iPads can help movie and sitcom production with improving efficiency and saving the environment.  If staff can make changes using their iPads directly, this eliminates time wasted at the end of the day updating the script with changes.  Just as Caruso mentioned, it also can serve as a creative tool for sketching and marking up storyboards.   And best of all, think about all the trees it can save!