The Cinergy Script Editor is a free Windows-based word processing software package that allows the user to write a screenplay in the most commonly accepted format. The Cinergy Script Editor is part of a larger retail product suite called the Cinergy Motion Picture Production System (Cinergy MPPS) offered by Mindstar Productions. The free script editor allows users to format the script properly as they write, but it also saves the script in a format compatible with the full Cinergy MPPS Production Management Suite. Then, the production management suite can continue with production-related tasks like Scheduling, Budgeting, On-Set Shot Logging, and Post-Production.

History

Mindstar Productions was originally founded in 1995 as a production company serving the film and video market in New York and Washington D.C., but soon became interested in streamlining the production process using new technology. In the late 1990's, Mindstar Productions released the first of a series of software products for the motion picture industry under the product name: Cinergy Motion Picture Production System, or Cinergy MPPS. Using the blossoming Internet as a distribution mechanism, Cinergy was sold as a single, comprehensive production management software package. Within a year, the product was expanded into multiple products, or "modules", each capable of servicing more specific aspects of motion picture production. Production professionals could purchase the entire Cinergy MPPS suite, or they could purchase only the modules specific for their particular job. After being separated into modules, the names Cinergy and Cinergy MPPS were still used to refer to one or more of the modules, but for greater clarity, more descriptive names began to be used like Cinergy:Budgeting, Cinergy:Scheduling, Cinergy:Shot Logging, Cinergy:Post Production, and Cinergy:Labor Rates.

The Cinergy product employed a completely new paradigm to production management. Earlier production management products serving the motion picture industry were individual, monolithic products tailored to a specific task. Input into these earlier systems was left completely up to the individual operating the software. For example, a writer would write his/her script in a word processor tailored for motion pictures. Then a production manager would re-type the names of scenes and other key information into a scheduling system to create a production schedule. Output from each task most frequently consisted of printouts and reports. With the introduction of Cinergy, the output of each phase of production was fed electronically into the next phase, dramatically reducing the amount of transcribing that had to occur between phases of production.

In early versions of Cinergy, the starting point was to import a script written using one of the many script editor programs available on the market. In 2002, Cinergy added an additional module called the Cinergy Script Editor which is similar to other script word processors available, with the exception that scripts saved with the Cinergy Script Editor are more tightly integrated with production tasks that occur after screenwriting.

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