Screen play

Dialogue Split by Action When a character is speaking and then there's some Action and then the character continues speaking, you indicate the continuation like this: DR. STRANGE This will be my crowning achievement! Life from life. Reincarnation while in the body. Zelda enters. DR. STRANGE (continuing) Never again will death be feared. I have bested the universe. Zelda slowly reaches for the power cord to Strange's machines. DR. STRANGE (continuing; sobbing) Why couldn't I have been just one month faster, poor Eliza, my love? Notice that if you have a continuing indicator and a Parenthetical, you put the continuing first, then add a semi-colon and a space, then type the Parenthetical. In TV and Sitcom scripts, the continuing indicator is placed as an Extension and abbreviated CONT'D, like this: DR. STRANGE This will be my crowning achievement! Life from life. Reincarnation while in the body. Zelda enters. DR. STRANGE (CONT'D) Never again will death be feared. I have bested the universe. Some people don't use continuing indicators. If you know you shouldn't use them, don't, otherwise you'll be fine if you do. Emphasis in Action When you write your Action, there are times where you will capitalize certain words or phrases for emphasis. For example: CARL BANNER shoves open the glass door. It hits the wall and the glass SHATTERS. The sample above shows the two most common uses of capitalization. First, when you introduce a character (the first time you type his/her name in Action), capitalize the name. Only capitalize the name the first time you use it, not every time. The second capitalization indicates a Sound Effect. The glass "shatters." The reason that Sound Effects or SFX (see Abbreviations) are capitalized is to alert the production people to the need for the sound effect. That's why emphasizing sound effects is optional and, frankly, I don't recommend it unless, of course, you know that the reader expects it. A much less common use of capitalization is to emphasize camera directions. Because this falls WAY into the realm of ...don't direct it, I really suggest you not do this unless you know it's expected. Just so you understand what I mean, here's a sample: As the circus caravan continues, we FOLLOW the sad clown and ZOOM IN to SEE that it's really Mrs. Clearson in disguise. Abbreviations There are certain ideas that are so commonly used in film scripts that they have abbreviations. Some of these are used as Extensions, like O.S. and V.O. Some of these are used in page breaks or when Action splits Dialogue, like CONT'D. Others show up in Action. The most familiar are "b.g." -- background, "f.g." -- foreground. For example: John mows the lawn while, in the b.g., a plane crashes. Runners cross the finish line as bushes in the f.g. start to shake and twitch. Should you use them? Your call. I find them distracting and think that a script is easier to read without them. But if it's important to communicate foreground or background (don't forget "don't direct"), use them as necessary. Some writers put them uppercase. Others use them lowercase. Again, it's up to you. Another common abbreviation is used in Shots. It's POV, for point of view. As if we're looking out the eyes of a character. No periods in POV. BOB Marty, where are you? MARTY'S POV Looking through the giant carpet fibers at Bob approaching the 20-foot shoe! Another one that you'll see every now and then is MOS. MOS means silent, without sound ("mit out zound" as the old German directors would say... some claim this is the origin of . I've never used MOS; it's really one of those cues that's there for the production staff. If the sound guy sees a day's worth of MOS scenes, he knows he's got the day off. Short Lines Definition Short Lines, or Forced Line Breaks, are used in Action and Dialogue for certain types of emphasis. Description Short Lines look like this: STEVEN And now, New York Haiku by Steven Sashen, Zen Poet. (reading a poem) The East River. A Frog Jumps in. OUCH! The Short Lines are the Haiku (okay, it's not really a Haiku). Notice how the lines end before the normal right Dialogue margin. This is a common use of Short Lines, poetry, lyrics, etc. In Action, Short Lines are usually used to separate different bits of Action without creating new Action elements. So, the normal version like this: Simmons walks up to the safe, making sure he isn't followed by the other troopers. He turns the dial. Click. He turns it the other way. Click. versus the Short Line way: Simmons walks up to the safe, making sure he isn't followed by the other troopers. He turns the dial. Click. He turns it the other way. Click. Short Lines are not that common and some people don't like them for anything other than things like lyrics. Dialogue Paragraphs Definition Dialogue Paragraphs create the effect of a pause in a Character's Dialogue. Description There are two circumstances where you see Dialogue Paragraphs. The first is a simple pause in a Character's Dialogue. The second is when a Character's Dialogue is interrupted by some Action. In the first instance, a Dialogue Paragraph just looks like a blank line tossed in the middle of the Dialogue. It looks that way because, that's what it is. Like this: COMMANDER You, over there with the scanning beam. Get me a reading on the solar flare. And you, with the sexy underwear on under your suit. Get into my ready room! The second instance is just like the first, but includes some Action in between the pieces of Dialogue, like this: COMMANDER You, over there with the scanning beam. Get me a reading on the solar flare. A beautiful cadet walks by. And Commander uses his x-ray scope. And you, with the sexy underwear on under your suit. Get into my ready room! I can't say do or don't use Dialogue Paragraphs, or do use the first kind but not the second, or vice versa. Dialogue Paragraphs have been popping up more and more lately, but they're still very stylistic. So, as always, use your best judgment, based on the effect you're trying to create and the expectations of your readers. Montage and Series of Shots A montage is a series of small related scenes, grouped together. A montage example you'll be familiar with is the "falling in love" montage where we see shots of our glowing couple at the amusement park, looking over the ocean, feeding each other dinner, dancing in the rain and, finally... well, you know. Often montages are silent scenes that have music or some other sound over them. A Series of Shots is similar to a montage, but takes place in one location during one piece of time. Think of a chase scene when you see a car racing through the street, then a baby carriage wheeled across the street, then the cop chasing the first car, then the first car narrowly missing the baby carriage and the cop car having to stop to avoid hitting it. Montages and Series of Shots are formatted the same way: MONTAGE OF THE UFOs LANDING A) The ship settles on the Washington Monument. B) Humans are rounded up into Candlestick Park as more ships land in the parking area. C) An African tribal leader chats with one of the aliens. SERIES OF SHOTS A) Police swarm the Federal Building. B) Ambulances swerve into the driveway. C) SWAT teams aim their guns. Just to note, the first line "Montage of..." is a Scene Heading. The first line of "Series of Shots" is a Shot. The other lines are Action elements. You could just say "MONTAGE" without the "OF THE UFOs LANDING." Whether you add the extra description is up to you. It's also optional whether you, at the end of a Montage or Series of Shots, add an Action line that says: END MONTAGE or END SERIES OF SHOTS If you write the Montage or Series of Shots well, it's obvious when they end, so I would avoid the ending indicators. Supers - Titles, Signs, etc. A Super is something that is superimposed over another thing. Sub-titles are supers. But, for your purposes, a Super is more likely some descriptive text like a time or location or a translation. Supers are written with Action elements.. For example: INT. PENTAGON, WAR ROOM - DAY SUPER - 10:15 Zulu, Present Time The council gathers around the table. What this means is that when we cut to the War Room, the words"10:15 Zulu, Present Time" will appear on the screen over the image of the council gathering. Another example: Marty looks at the sign which is in Arabic. SUPER - Do Not Enter. Death Penalty Enforced. MARTY This must be the place. He walks in the door. Titles Some writers like to indicate when the film's title sequence should start and end by writing: BEGIN TITLES END TITLES Phone calls and Intercuts Intercuts are when we switch back and forth between two or more scenes quickly and repetitively. Most often we see intercuts when characters are speaking on the phone and we jump back and forth between them. Sometimes intercuts happen with scenes that are related by time, but not dialogue, like when we see someone dismantling a bomb and cut back and forth between that person and the people in a safe place who check their watches, waiting for him. Intercuts have also been used in time travel situations. All you want to do is start the intercut and let the director decide how to do it. Like this: EXT. HWY. 57, PHONE BOOTH - DAY Jessie runs into the booth and quickly dials a number. Intercut with... INT. MULDOON'S OFFICE - DAY Muldoon grabs the phone almost before it rings. MULDOON Yea, what' up? JESSIE He's here! Hurry! Often the intercut will end at the next Scene Heading. If you want the intercutting to end in one of the locations you've been using, just reuse that Scene Heading. So, to do that by continuing the above scene, we get: MULDOON We got you, Jess. Just leave the phone off the hook and hide out till we get there. JESSIE Okay. Please hurry! Jessie drops the phone so the receiver dangles. He runs away. MULDOON (to his assistant) Get a trace on this. Fast! EXT. HWY. 57, PHONE BOOTH - DAY A gloved hand hangs up the phone. So you can see that when the Action refers to Jessie dropping the phone, it's obvious that the director will have to cut to that location. But we really emphasize the return to the phone booth by adding the Hwy. 57 Scene Heading. Realize, of course that you can have a phone conversation without intercutting. The scene takes place in one location and the person on the other end of the phone talks in voice-over.