Highland 2 Releases Free Gender Analysis Tool

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 31, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Highland 2 (https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/), the Mac writing app from acclaimed screenwriter and novelist John August, earned praise from writers and reviewers upon its launch in May 2018. One feature that attracted the attention of the NY Times was Highland 2's integrated Gender Analysis tool.

Is Your Script Gender-Balanced? Try This Test (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/movies/is-your-script-gender-balanced-try-this-test.html)

Gender Analysis is a revolutionary tool that calculates the percentage of dialogue spoken by male and female characters in a script, letting writers get a real-time view of their script's balance.

"So often, it's hard to get a sense of the balance when you're reading a page at a time," says August, whose screenwriting credits include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Big Fish. "The Gender Analysis tool gives you a bird's-eye view, letting you see not just who's speaking, but how much. And because it's interactive, you can experiment to see what flipping a few characters would do to the balance."

The Gender Analysis tool was inspired by a conversation with Bumblebee screenwriter Christina Hodson, who was seeking a way to engage writers to think about inclusion and diversity. "It made sense to me that we can do a lot ourselves, before [our scripts] even leave our desk."

With Highland 2.1, now in the Mac App Store, this tool developed for writers can now be used by filmmakers, producers and executives curious about the gender balance in a given screenplay.

Highland 2's ability to "melt" screenplay PDFs means that nearly any screenplay can be analyzed, including available online.

With just a few clicks, a user can reveal that the Oscar-nominated screenplay for GREEN BOOK has male characters speaking 94% of the dialogue. In contrast, the screenplay for CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? also Oscar-nominated, has men speaking 35% of the dialogue.

The Gender Analysis tool also shows that CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? has 31 scenes with two or more female characters interacting, while GREEN BOOK has only two.

"This kind of analysis used to take hours of marking up scripts and counting lines by hand," says August. "Now it's a minute or less."

The Gender Analysis tool is included in the free basic version of Highland 2, available today on the Mac App Store.

John August will be available for interviews or comment on Friday, February 1st between 10am and 3pm PST. To schedule an appointment, please contact Alejandro Victorero at [email protected].

About the Company:
The Quote-Unquote Company is a five-person company headed by screenwriter and novelist John August, whose credits include Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Arlo Finch series.

According to August, "All of our apps are basically tools I've needed that didn't exist. So we made them."

When not tinkering with Highland, the Quote-Unquote Company team worked on other problems nagging screenwriters.

• Weekend Read makes it easy to read screenplays on your iPhone, using Highland's legendary PDF-melting prowess.
• Bronson Watermarker turns a list of names into a folder full of personalized PDFs.
• Assembler lets you quickly arrange and combine any number of plain-text files, including Fountain and Markdown.
• Courier Prime is a better Courier designed specifically for screenplays.

Media Contact:
Alejandro Victorero
+1 786 470 0966
[email protected]

SOURCE Highland 2