1

Script Layout

Why does my screenplay have to be formatted?

So it's easy to read. It may be OK to have a scruffy looking script if you are the only one who will use it, but to allow your cast and crew to make sense of it applying a few rules of formatting makes it easier to read.

There are two main types of fictional screenplay

a. the spec script and b. the shooting script.

The spec script is what gets sent out to producers and actors, but we can probably forget about that as we are going to pick up a camera ourselves, so we can write a shooting script.

1. Layout

• Scripts are best typed on only one side of the paper in 12 point courier. • Double spacing between lines allows you to read the script easier. • Leave good borders around the script.

Keep to the above tips and you will have a well laid out script. This can help you time your script as now one page of screenplay will equal one minute of screen time.

2

Now take a read of the sample script below.

2. Slug Lines

INT. FRANKENSTEIN'S LABORATORY - NIGHT

The scene heading or slug line. Consists of either INT. (Interior - eg. in a room) or EXT. (Exterior eg. on the street), the location (eg. CITY STREET. NEW YORK) followed by either DAY or NIGHT (Forget about morning/afternoon/sunset etc. as it makes no difference when it is being filmed - no one is going to shoot you for filming in the afternoon and pretending it is the morning).

Here's a few examples to give you a rough idea.

INT. MORTUARY - NIGHT

EXT. RACE TRACK - DAY

Scenes inside cars are INTeriors despite the fact that the car is outside. You may occasionally see EXT/INT or INT/EXT on a script. This occurs when the camera is in one location and the action is happening in another. For example :

INT/EXT. HOTEL LOBBY/CITY STREET - DAY

(The camera or a character is watching the action occuring outside)

3

EXT/INT. CAR/APARTMENT - NIGHT

(The camera or character are sitting in a car watching something happening through an apartment's window. Hey, maybe their on a stakeout or something!)

3. The Business

The scene direction or business. This tells the reader what is going on. Clear, concise. Always showing rather than telling. Don't say that :

✗DAVID is suffering inner torment because of his wife's kidnapping.

...show us!

✓DAVID runs his hands through his hair. Picks up a shot of bourbon, tastes it and winces. He throws the glass across the room, hitting the mirror which SHATTERS.

Oh yeah! Write in the present tense. It gives events and action much more immediacy, like they are really happening, which is what you want.

4. Dialogue

Dialogue appears in a column down the centre of the page indented from the business. Its in the form

NAME (Direction) Hey, this is what your character says.

a. The name goes in Upper Case.

b. The direction isn't always given, in fact in a spec script you would provide hardly any - telling an actor how to act is as bad as telling a director how to direct! The only occasion you might put some in would be if dialgue was directed specifically at another character eg. (To Alberto) or if it has to be said in a particular style (Whispering).

c. And finally the dialogue itself.

• Try to keep it to a minimum, no long speeches here. • That way there is less for your actors to remember and less for them to muck

up. • Good actors will always make the best of what you have written for them and

can provide so much more with their intonation and body language which you simply cannot write.

4

• I'm sure I read somewhere that only 20% of communication is speech.

c. Avoid exposition (that's when your character explains something in detail) – d. try and show rather than tell. Keep it simple and heed Lew Hunter's words

'Good dialogue is dialogue that illuminates what the characters are not saying'.

5. Character Names

When a character first appears their name in the scene direction should be in CAPITALS. After that their name is in lower case.

Try to avoid giving minor characters names like THUG 4 as its pretty demeaning to have to play such a lowly character - 'Hey, I'm not even playing THUG 2'. You needn't go to extremes and give them a full name (unless the character is named by another character), just spice it up, so that when you offer the part to your friend, rather then being the fourth thug they could be a MEAN THUG or a TATTOED THUG. Let's hope your friend doesn't take the description too personally, eh!

6. Sound

You can put important sounds in CAPITALS, so that monsters SHRIEK and cars EXPLODE, but this is up to you. Some people like to, others don't. If you do put sounds in upper case try not to overdo it.

You see the word OVER used in scripts. This means that there is an important sound OVER the normal soundtrack eg. music.

7. Camera Directions

As this is a shooting script we can add camera and actor directions to the script - in a spec script you wouldn't do this - just like you wouldn't turn round to Coppola and say 'Do a Close Up here'. But as this is our show we get to play director.

There are several abbreviations to speed the writing and reading along.

C/U - Close-up MS - Medium Shot LS - Long Shot Two-Shot - Shot of two characters in the same picture

V.O. - voiceover (e.g."Ex-Cop, Ex-Bladerunner" from er...Bladerunner) O.S. - off screen

5

P.O.V. - Point of view (eg. one of those wobbly cameras they use when someone is breaking into an apartment in a horror movie. For a great example watch the first few minutes of Strange Days).

M.O.S. - without sound. Apparently comes from "Mit out sound" which some German director used to shout (or something). Great for when your characters are staking out some joint, watching the bad guys pull off some drug deal and they can't hear what they are saying.

8. Camera Movements

CRAB - camera moves completely to the left/right PAN - camera pivots left or right

TILT - camera pivots up or down BOOM - camera moves up or down.

DOLLY - camera moves in/out from subject ZOOM - camera zooms in/out from subject (not strictly a camera movement cos its the lens that's moving not the camera but you knew that right?)

6

9. Transitions

These are how you change from one scene to another. They always sit over to the right of your script and on the whole you will find yourself using CUT TO : which is a straight change of picture from one scene to the next.

There are some other transitions available but be careful, they have different connotations to the veiwer.

DISSOLVE TO :

The final shot of the previous scenes fades into the first shot of the next scene. This can be used to suggest the passing of time. Oh! And you will need a three machine edit suite or a non-linear computer editng system to achieve this.

FADE IN :

Usually used at the start of films, with FADE OUT used to end the movie. You can also use CUT TO BLACK and CUT FROM BLACK/CUT IN. You can use these transitions together to alter the mood and pace. For example :

NICK grins at ALBERTO.

NICK You're even uglier than I remember.

Alberto scratches his head, thinking, before pulling his fist back and hitting Nick full on in the face.

CUT TO BLACK :

FADE IN :

INT. BEDROOM - DAY.

Nick comes around, groggy at first. He gingerly feels his chin, pulls himself off the bed and over to the sink. He grimaces and spits out a few teeth.

7

Dual Column Shooting Script A shooting script contains a very elaborate description of all shots, locations, character, action, sound and technical details of the film. Shooting script serves the following functions.

• The shooting script is a breakdown of all all camera placements and movements. All shots must have bolded shot descriptions:: ECU- extreme close up/ CU- close up / MCU- medium close up / LS- long shot or FS- full shot/ ELS- extreme long shot/ OTS- over the shoulder / XO- Cross-Shots-/ BEV- Bird’s Eye View/ 2S-FS - two shot full shot / WEV- Worms Eye View.

• Remember to include changes in camera angles and height in your descriptions as well.

• Every shot you chose should be motivated by the action and emotion in the script. Remember that your audience is looking for clues to understanding the details of your story.

• Remember WALLDO when visualizing your shots: (Wide, Angles, Linking shots, Low angles, Depth, Opposites)

• Any special effects or titles should also included in the shot descriptions. • The shooting script also divides the film into separate locations. Therefore, all

locations can be fixed and the possible shooting problems inherent in these locations can be foreseen.

• The script can be a guide in determining the exact length of the film by mentally timing out each shot.

• The script provides a break-down for the actors as to which shots and scenes they will be appearing in, when they will be needed during shooting.

• The shooting script includes the exact dialogue and sound you will hear at each precise moment of production. Sample Scene- In the drawing room of a house, a mother is pleading with the father. But the father remains stubborn. Their son is ease dropping on their conversations with a pistol in his hand.

8

Acting with a Pencil Storyboarding your Movie

Storyboarding?

Storyboarding is the process of producing sketches of the shots of your script. The end result looks like comic book of your film (without the speech bubbles).

Why do it?

It helps you think about how your film is going to look. You can work faster on set and as pictures communicate better than words it will allow your camera crew to move their camera and lights, for producers to foresee problems, for the art department to know which parts of the location are going to be in shot and so on. Even the actors will get a feel of what they are going to be shooting!

So I need to be an artist?

Well you can be, but looking at storyboards by Hitchcock or Spielberg you have to admit that they can't draw. There are professional storyboard artists that can give you results that look better than the final film. However its a good idea to bash them out yourself, it allows you to experiment quickly and cheaply, testing out different versions of how a scene may look and play on camera.

Storyboarding is especially useful for complex visual sequences e.g. elaborate shots or special effects sequences. Sometimes a film only uses storyboards for difficult sequences other times the entire film is storyboarded. The Coen Brothers (Fargo, The Big Lebowski) storyboard extensively, allowing them to shoot just the sequences they require for editing, saving both time and money.

Hang on though, pictures are still, movies move.

Ah! You got me there. There are a few tricks storyboard artists have up their sleeves to illustrate movement - whether its movement within the frame (actors walking) or the frame moving itself (camera panning etc.).

Arrows - Suppose the camera is tracking in, following a bad guy's footsteps. Draw in an arrow pointing into shot to show the camera's movement. Now the hero's head is pulled back by one of the bad guy's goons. Use an arrow to show the movement of the head being turned. What about a zoom in? From each corner draw in arrows pointing to the centre, draw in a new smaller frame to show the end of the zoom. Generally I try and use thick white arrows to show camera moves and thin black arrows to show objects moving.

9

The floating frame - What if you want to show the camera panning to show a cityscape, or following a character as they walk through an airport? There's two options here: 1) Illustrate one shot using more than one storyboard frame showing the key stages of the shot's movement across a number of frames or 2) Draw out the entire scene (e.g.. the horizon of a city) and place a frame on it with an arrow indicating the direction of movement.

Transitions - The storyboard can also include transitions in your film. Write these in the gaps between the frames e.g.. DISSOLVE TO :

This is great but I can't draw!!

Neither can I, so I cheat.

Screen time is filled with people, and figures are painful to draw, getting the correct perspective of arms and legs is problematic. The people in my drawings tend to look like car crash victims with limbs all over the place.

I managed to pick up some really cheap wooden mannequins (they're 12 inch high artists models with joints so you can bend them into shape) that I use for more professional looking storyboards (oh! and did I mention they're fast too?). Over a couple of nights I rattled through the script, breaking the scenes down into shots, arranging the mannequins and shooting stills of them. I used a video camera and grabbed the shots, then arranged them as a storyboard. You could just as equally use a stills camera or draw from the figures (which is a much easier than trying to imagine where hands and legs go in your head).

10

Storyboard Shot Final filmed shot

If you can't get hold of any mannequins try using an Action Man and Barbie and start playing (I'm sure this is how director Todd Haynes got the idea for 'Superstar : The Karen Carpenter Story' - a shot entirely with toy dolls). If your film stars a baldie like Yul Brynner you can always try Lego men.

Now you can add to the images if you want, scribbling on rough faces and expressions or drawing in props and buildings. I left most blank, figuring that this was the actors' job.

You can quickly build up a store of images, and because many shots in films are similar (over-the-shoulder shots, wide shots etc.) you can use pictures again and again for different scenes and different movies.

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Here's a few quick methods for producing fast and dirty storyboards.

1. Keep the area you have to draw small. It allows you to draw much faster. The pictures become more like doodles than works of art. Remember the point is to get an idea of how things will look on screen. Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise) is famous for his Ridleygrams - rough, almost indecipherable sketches that outline what he has in mind.

2. Copy up a set of storyboard sheets so you don't have to spend all night drawing screen boxes.

• Standard ratio (4:3) - 20 frames • Standard ratio with space for overhead plan - 8 frames

18

• Widescreen (16:9) - 15 frames

3. Sketch in pencil so you can make changes easily, then ink in for photocopying. Feel free to use any medium you are happy with - professional storyboard artists use everything from magic markers to charcoal.

4. Scribble down short notes about what's happening in shot (e.g.. BOB enters) what characters are saying ("Is this it? Is this how...") or sound effects (Roll of THUNDER).

5. An overhead plan view of the location of the camera, actors and light can be helpful if you know the location you are going to be working on.

6. Number your shots so that they can be quickly referred to on the shot list and during editing.

Drawing storyboards is an excellent way to keep motivated, to show you're organised and to let everyone else know what's going on in your head.

Storyboards aren't there to constrain you. Just like the script they are there to back you up during shooting. If everything starts flowing on set let it happen. In the real situation you may see a new angle - go ahead, shoot it. Get the shots you need by checking your storyboard and give yourself the time and freedom to experiment.

Get your pencils acting!