PRESIDENT AND CO-FOUNDER, WRITE BROTHERS, INC. ACADEMY AWARD WINNING SOFTWARE DEVELOPER & CHIEF SOFTWARE ARCHITECT, DRAMATICA
Stephen Greenfield’s professional career has been a unique blend of entertainment and technology. His career in software engineering began at age 13 when he accidentally stumbled into a classified defense network project run by Case Western Reserve Institute of Technology for the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (then ARPA). Enlisted by the chairman of Case Western's computer department to develop non-classified word processing tools, his programming career pre-dated the personal computer revolution. After making a dozen short films in high school, Stephen was accepted into the highly competitive cinema production program at the University of Southern California.
Concurrent with his cinema studies, Stephen worked for four years as a consultant to the USC Engineering Computer Lab, where he developed a knack for designing and programming complex information systems.
Stephen worked briefly as a cinematographer on low-budget films, as well as shooting IMAX special effects. Stephen has co-written several feature screenplays, including one sold to Disney, starring Mickey Rooney. Little Spies was one of the highest-rated Disney Sunday Movies, and won the Genesis Award for the story's portrayal of animal rights issues. Greenfield was then chosen to co-write the sequel to Disney's Swiss Family Robinson, the studio’s second-highest grossing live action film.
Stephen wanted to find a way to write screenplays on computers, and his desire coincided with that of fellow USC cinema student Chris Huntley. They formed Screenplay Systems in March of 1982 to develop Scriptor, the very first screenplay word processing program, which quickly became the industry standard for computerized screenplay formatting.
In 1994 Greenfield and Huntley were honored with an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for the development of Scriptor. The award was the first granted to a pure software invention connected with the preproduction of motion pictures. It remains the only Academy Technical Achievement Award ever granted for writing software.
Greenfield and Huntley designed the hugely popular Movie Magic™ Budgeting and Scheduling software for film/TV production. Movie Magic became the industry standard, and was used to budget and schedule approximately 90% of produced film and television.
Stephen also co-designed and programmed Dramatica Pro, a story creation and analysis tool based on the critically acclaimed Dramatica theory of story.
Stephen has been directly involved in the creation of other writing tools, including Movie Magic Screenwriter, Outline4D, Streamline, and Word Menu. Stephen is a co-inventor on two Dramatica software patents, one software patent for Outline4D’s timeline presentation, and a fourth patent for Streamline’s automatic analysis and reduction of document length.