No-budget sets
Do you need an iPad and a paid app to run continuity on a no-budget set?
No. The established script supervisor apps, MovieSlate, ScriptE, Scriptation, are paid and built for iPad or iPhone specifically. A phone browser running a web app can do the core job, logging takes with a timecode and flagging the keeper, for free, on any phone with a browser, Android included, and it works with no signal, because none of that logging needs a network connection.
What the paid iPad apps get you
This is worth saying fairly. A dedicated native app on a full-size tablet has real advantages: a bigger screen for reading the day's script pages side by side with the log, deeper feature sets built up over years, and a workflow a script supervisor who trained on that app already knows cold. If a production already has the budget and the hardware, and the department is already fluent in one of those tools, switching for its own sake is not the argument here.
What the free version is betting on instead
Every one of the established paid tools assumes iOS. That is a real gap on the kind of production where a phone browser matters most: a student short, a documentary crew of three, a no-budget indie where the person closest to the camera at any given moment might be the 2nd AC, the DP, or the director doubling as their own script supervisor, and that person is exactly as likely to be holding an Android phone as an iPhone. A tool that only runs on one platform quietly assumes a budget line, or at least a hardware choice, that a lot of productions in this bracket have not made.
What "free" covers here: logging takes, tagging coverage, flagging the keeper, and working offline, all with no account and no cost, unlimited. Sign-in is required for shot-list enrichment and for PDF, Premiere XML, and CSV export, each drawing on a small free quota rather than being unlimited.
Where it matters most
No-budget and student sets where a dedicated script supervisor and their own hardware is not in the plan. Documentary crews shooting run-and-gun, where whoever is free grabs whatever phone is in their pocket to jot down a timecode. Any set where the alternative to a phone-native log is a printed continuity sheet on a clipboard, since the comparison that actually matters there is not against MovieSlate, it is against paper.
Any phone, any browser
The phone already in your pocket
Log takes, tag coverage, and flag the keeper, free, no account, works offline on Android or iPhone. Export a PDF shot log with a free account, within a small free quota.
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