A few years ago, there weren't enough screenwriting applications on the Mac side but now there seems to be an abundance which is great for users. The newcomer to this family is Mariner's Montage. Written in Cocoa, this software is quite attractive. It does much of what other screenwriting applications do: format scripts, provide outlines, has a task manager and all the other basic stuff. But it also has some features that can only be found here.

So I took a test drive with a beta version that you can demo or buy for $99. I am guessing the eventual price will be around $150. When you open the app, you are prompted to choose what screenplay style you want to work with. For example like BBC television, Musicals, a regular ol'Screenplay, etc. I chose Screenplay with color coded text.
Right off, you will notice how attractive it is, how very Mac it is. The fading grey toolbar, the lickable icons, and the three panel window layout (similar to Apple's Mail). For a beta application, it is surprising to see that Montage's appearance is better than the other screenwriting apps I have used on the Mac (which I think is everything besides Movie Magic).

But it does not mean that I think the user interface is necessarily better. I like the fact that in Celtx, I can work on my script and see the outline in the lower left. In Montage, you have to switch out of writing to see the outline. In Celtx, you can also work in tabbed windows which is pretty cool and smart. For some this will not make any difference but if you are like me and live within tabbed windows, these things matters. I do however like the bottom bar has a lot of basic tools.



In Scene mode, the scenes have this nice rounded edge with a dropped shadow. Looks good,  very easy to know where scenes end and begin. Very much like the panels in Automator. But this could be a pain to some as it might impede the flow. Valuable real-estate is being lost for this effect. Eventually, I hope Montage effect has a preference to turn this off or have another more simpler way of differentiating the scenes. A simple grey line would work for me.

Writing was actually quite nice. Auto-complete worked like how it should - quick and it does not interrupt the flow. A lot of the other apps have nailed this part with my favorite being Final Draft. Again, I have not worked with Movie Magic, so take what I just said with a grain of salt.

For research, I think Celtx used to be great because it was basically a Firefox browser. But with the most recent release, Celtx had web surfing configured to your default browser. Bummer! I also liked that Celtx had researched picture files accessible through the Finder instead of having to open your project file again. Once I dragged a pic into Montage, I couldn't just drag it out of the app again. You could drag it into another app that would accept such a file. It was not available in the Finder, dragging into Finder, it would show up as a image clipping which means nothing to me because it is a blank clipping.

Like many new Mac applications, Montage takes advantage of smart folders. Smart folders are virtual folders that point to files that fall under certain criteria. This is an incredibly cool feature. I am guessing that this is the first screenwriting app to take advantage of smart folders. However, in its current state, it was a little too buggy for me. Also, Tiger's Spotlight did not work with the app.

Export options were limited to RTF (Rich Text), Word Doc and PDF. Noticeably absent were .txt and HTML files. I think these should be included. Importing .txt and RTF files worked fine.

There is a Fade feature which basically fades out the screenplay so you can see what is behind it. So far, I find it useless. Another new feature is that it syncs with your address book. I could be wrong but it is first screenwriting app that does this. But again a feature I have no need for.

Overall, Montage is very encouraging, Celtx is still my tool of choice for writing screenplays and the fact that it is free and open-sourced only makes it better. But I think Montage is a nice in-between the open sourced Celtx and the industry giant Final Draft. I think it is priced too high, around $80 is where I would like to see it. But the makers of this software are to be reckoned with. Macjournal, another product from Mariner, is an awesome software and if they can do to Montage what they have done with that app, Montage has a very bright future.