- When beginning a new story, select the Spotlight format to write in:
Selecting this format means the entire story will be in Spotlight. You cannot “ set format spotlight ” in these stories.
So when using spotlight feature your are not suppose to add or place characters in a spot, just make them talk with no commad for example
EXT. CAMPUS QUAD EAST - DAY
@transition fade in black 0.2
@pan to zone 2 in 0.5
CHARACTER ONE (admire)
Hey guys
As you can see here I was not placed in a spot
I just started talking and I came from the right
In order for me to come from the right I needed to be the "main character"
CHARACTER 2 (curtsey)
As you can see now when I starts talking I appear automatically
And character one disappeared from the stage
In order for her to re-appear she needs to speak again
@pan to zone 1 in 1.0
@CHARACTER THREE stands screen left AND CHARACTER THREE faces right
CHARACTER THREE (talk_suggest)
So I was told to do this
CHARACTER THREE stands screen right AND CHARACTER THREE faces left
As you can see from here I was needed to be placed in this format
Thats because since I changed zones I needed to be added in a spot
Or else I would have appeared in a random spot which will mess up your script
@pan to zone 2 in 1
CHARACTER ONE (talk_neutral)
Well as for me
I will always be appearing in the right or left depending on the zone I am
Thats because I'm the "main character"
But if you don't add a main character
I will just have been appearing at random places like character three said
So when you are panning to different zone you HAVE to use a command or the character will just appear in a different zone
@CHAR stands screen left/right/center
&CHAR stands screen right/left/center
But you don’t have to make them walk like…
@CHAR enter from left /right to screen /left/right/center
That will just give you an error or warning
Another way to make the character appear without the dialog is to make them do an animation like this…
When a simple, non-dialog emotion is inserted, characters will swipe on to emote without saying anything:
if you don’t know how to put the main character you just look what you need to do here
First you click on character
Find a space there that says Main Character
Chose a character to be the main charracter
#Note that you can only chose on character to be the main character
And just click save
If you are not using spotlight mode but you want to just type in this
set format spotlight
if you want to return into the full body more just type in this
set format cinematic
#Note that this doesn’t work if you are actually working with spotlight (except for the “phonetext” format
New Feature !
set format phonetext
#the story will be in a text format , meaning that it will look like you are sending messages to a character (Not actaully typing but pretending that you are sending/receiving the text messages)
if you want the character stay when the narrator is talking you need to do something like this
NARRATOR ((character_stays))
Dialog
This is how it will look like
You can hide characters if you want but I don’t know you want them to hide but just type in this
hide CHAR
This is how it will look like
#Note that you don’t need to use “@” nor “&” for this
If you want them to customize the character using spotlight you have to add the ((character_stays)) in every dialog which might take some time to do so…But other than those basic things all the other things should be the same like overlays, backgrounds, choices, conditions (effects), flag, ect.
you can see an example HERE!
More about spotlight coding you can see HERE!