Questions and answers

A Final Draft .fdx, a .fountain file, or a PDF with standard screenplay formatting. Up to 160 pages.

An .fdx is the most accurate. Final Draft records what every line is — character, dialogue, parenthetical, action — so we read your script exactly as you wrote it, with no guessing.

A PDF stores positions on a page rather than meaning, so we work out what each line is from where it sits: action at the left margin, dialogue indented, character names further in again. That works well for a proper export and not at all for a PDF that has lost its margins — a scan, a Word export, a script pasted into a document.

Because a Final Draft file does not contain pages. Final Draft works them out when it renders, from the font and paper size, so there is no page count in the file to read.

We estimate from the text using standard screenplay geometry. Since the price tier depends on pages, the number is labelled as an estimate wherever it appears, and you see it before you pay. If it looks wrong, export a PDF and upload that instead — a PDF has real pages.

Not reliably. All of them use different conventions from a screenplay, and the parser is built around screenplay geometry. You can try it — parsing is free and you will see the character list before you spend anything — but expect it to misread things.

We decline rather than quote badly. Get in touch and we will sort something out.

Before you pay, the casting page flags what it is unsure about: characters with nearly identical names, roles with one or two lines that may be sound cues rather than people, and names it could not read as male or female.

You can fix any of it there. If a character is missing entirely, that usually points at the PDF's formatting — tell us and send the file if you can, because that is a bug on our side, not yours.

You do. We cast everyone automatically first, guessing age and gender from the script, so you start from a complete cast rather than a blank form. Every one of those choices is yours to change.

No two characters are given the same voice while an unused voice remains. Two people who sound identical is the fastest way to lose the thread of a scene.

Over ten thousand. You are not choosing from a shortlist we decided on — the whole library is open to you, filtered by age, gender, accent and language.

A company of voices we have listened to ourselves is offered first, because a blank search of ten thousand names is not a starting point. But you are never confined to it: audition anyone, and the voice you pick joins your cast immediately.

Yes, and it costs nothing. Auditioning happens while you are casting that character, filtered to the age and gender you have set for them. A voice already playing someone else in your script says so, so you do not pick it by accident.

The narrator reads action and scene headings, which is roughly 70% of the runtime — a bigger decision than any single character. You choose male or female from a short list we have listened to end to end, or pick from the wider library.

A narrator's voice is never given to a character. A character who sounds like the narrator reads as the narrator talking to himself.

That works. Choose your narrator and cast from the full voice library rather than the default shortlist, which is English-language.

An optional $20 upgrade. Your parentheticals — (quietly), (not listening) — are performed rather than ignored, and you get an editor to adjust them line by line.

Without it, every line is read straight. With a script that leans on performance it is worth it; with sparse dialogue it may not be, which is why it is a separate choice rather than baked into the price.

$25 up to 60 pages, $35 up to 130, $40 up to 160. Direction adds $20 to any of them. You are quoted the exact price when your script is parsed, before you commit to anything.

No. One payment for one table read. No monthly fee, no credits to top up, nothing to cancel later.

After you have uploaded, cast every character and chosen a narrator — the last step before recording. Everything up to that point is free, on purpose, so you know what you are buying.

No. You can go from a PDF to a finished MP3 without one.

Signing in is offered afterwards, and its only job is to keep things: your download stays available and your cast is remembered, so draft two gets the same actors as draft one.

Your purchase is safe. Return to the same address and it will pick up where it stopped — recorded lines are kept, so a retry does not start from the beginning.

If a voice becomes unavailable mid-recording we recast that character and carry on, and the finished page tells you which roles changed. The exception is a voice you chose yourself: we stop and ask rather than quietly substituting someone you picked deliberately.

If it fails, yes, in full. If the render dies, comes back truncated or silent, or never arrives — email us and you get your money back. We would rather re-run it, but that is your call.

If it works and you simply do not like the performance, no. You audition every voice on your own words before paying, and that step exists so the decision is made before the money moves. The terms say this in full.

Not by us. Your screenplay is used to produce your table read and for nothing else — we do not train models, and we have nothing to train them on.

The dialogue is sent to ElevenLabs to be spoken, because that is how the audio gets made. What they may do with text sent to their API is governed by their terms rather than ours, so we point you at them rather than making a promise on their behalf.

30 days, then it is deleted automatically — the PDF, the audio and the cast. The page shows how many days are left.

Download the MP3 rather than relying on us to hold it. If you want it kept past 30 days, that is what signing in is for.

Anyone with the link, so treat it like an unlisted file rather than a locked one. We do not list, index or share it.

That depends on what you agreed when you received it, and we cannot answer it for you — but here is exactly what happens, so you can.

Where it goes. The file is stored on our server. The dialogue and action lines are sent to ElevenLabs, our speech provider, to be spoken — that is the one place your text leaves our systems, and there is no version of this product where it does not. ElevenLabs is SOC 2 certified and stores its data in the United States. Nothing is sent anywhere else.

Who reads it. Nobody. It is processed by software. No one here opens a script unless you write to us asking for help with that specific one.

What it is not used for. It is not published, listed, indexed, sold, or shown to another customer. It is not used to train anything of ours.

How long it lasts. 30 days, then the script and the audio are deleted automatically. You can delete either sooner.

If you are covered by an NDA or a submission agreement, read it. Many of them restrict sending material to third-party services, and that restriction would apply here as it would to any transcription, translation or storage tool. If yours does, do not upload it — ask the writer, who is usually glad to have their own script recorded.

Yes. Open the script from My screenplays and use Delete. It removes the file, the audio and the casting immediately rather than waiting for the 30 days to run out.

If you paid for it, download the MP3 first — deleting takes the audio with it and we cannot get it back.

A single MP3 of the whole script: dialogue in each character's voice, action and scene headings narrated, with pauses between lines and scenes and every voice levelled to the same loudness so you are not reaching for the volume.

Minutes for a short, longer for a feature — it is recorded line by line. You can close the page; come back to the same address and it will be there.

Roughly a minute a page, so a feature usually lands near two hours. You are given an estimate before you pay.

Yes, and only that character's lines are recorded again — everything already made is kept.