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Version: Next (unreleased)

Fountain, the source of truth

What Fountain is​

Fountain is a plain-text screenplay format: you write the screenplay in ordinary text, and a few conventions (a line in capitals becomes a character name, an INT./EXT. line becomes a scene heading…) are enough to format it. It is an open format, readable as-is, that locks you into no software.

You do not need to know these conventions to write: the Screenplay mode offers an editor that formats everything for you. But it helps to know that, under the hood, your screenplay is Fountain.

Why it matters​

In Open Cine Prod Tools, the screenplay text is the heart of the project. The other modes do not copy that text: they hook onto it.

  • The shot list links each shot to the exact passages of the screenplay it covers.
  • The breakdown tags passages of the screenplay to fill the resources catalogues.
  • The schedule places shots, which point back to scenes.

The result: when the screenplay changes, the application knows what is affected and warns you (for example, a shot whose covered text has moved is flagged "needs checking"). It is also why everything starts from good foundations: a clean screenplay makes the rest of the work reliable.

A word on vocabulary​

In the English interface, a scene is a screenplay scene, in the usual sense. In the French interface the same thing is called une séquence, because the word scène names something else in that trade — a naming rule that touches French alone. For the concrete formatting, see the Fountain cheat sheet.