Script formatting basics

This is not a post on story structure or movie analysis. This is simply an introduction to the basics of movie script formatting, intended strictly for the beginner. To be more precise, we focus on feature length narrative spec scripts. In other words, a movie script for a fictional or fictionalized story not written on commission.

A number of examples of scripts are given at the bottom of this post. (They are included based on their quality, film-wise and script-wise, not by whether they were commissioned or not.) There are also some references which the reader can use to pursue the topic further.

The brief examples from produced movie scripts given below are for educational use only.

Basic elements:

1. Font: Courier 12 point is standard, but I think Times Roman 12 point is allowed. Bold and italics can use used, if needed, but if it can't be typed using an old-fashioned manual typewriter, don't use it.
   
2. Slug lines -
   The slug line is in all caps. These are abbreviated location and lighting instructions for the crew to shoot the scene. They generally begin with either INT. or EXT. (short for interior, resp., exterior). Occasionally, in a car ride or a shot in a doorway, you might see INT./EXT., which means the camera can be inside or outside (or both).
   

   Example 1: From John August's Frankenweenie:
   

   INT. CLASSROOM - DAY
   

   This tells us that it is an interior shot, set in a classroom, during the day.
   
   Example 2: From that same script:
   

   EXT. BACK YARD - DAY
   

   This tells us that it is an exterior shot, set in a back yard (Victor and Sparky's back yard, as we learn later in the scene), during the day. It is also correct to say
   

   EXT. VICTOR'S HOUSE - BACK YARD - DAY
   

   There are lots of variations on slug line formats, as well. For instance, maybe you want the camera outside the classroom looking in, or inside the house looking out into the back yard. There are also "secondary slug lines", used, for example, when a number of scenes take place inside the same house. However, to keep things basic, we only list the simplest cases.
   
3. Action lines -
   

   They give a concisely worded scene description of (a) what the audience sees in the location provided by the slug line, (b) who is present (or at least, seen by the camera) in the location, and (c) any motion we see. Action lines can occur anywhere but the action lines immediately after the slug line gives the audience the kinds of details you would want a set designer to know.
   

   Example 3: From John August's Frankenweenie:
   
   INT. CLASSROOM - DAY
   
   MR. RZYKRUSKI stands at the blackboard, where he's written his name. He has a thick, impossible-to-place accent, somewhere between a Russian spy and Dracula.
   
   The character cue for Mr. Rzykruski is in all caps because this is the first time we have seen this character. For the remainder of the action lines of the script he will be simply Mr. Rzykruski.
   

   

   Example 4: From Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig's Bridesmaids:
   
   INT. CLEAN, UPSCALE MODERN BATHROOM - MORNING
   
   Annie stands in front of a mirror in nice lingerie. She puts on lotion, make-up, brushes her hair, mascara, etc. She's getting ready to ...
   
   Creep back into the bed, where Ted is still sleeping. She gets in and begins to position herself to show her good parts. Coughs and nudges Ted to wake him up. Annie quickly pretends she’s still asleep. He taps her.
   
   Descriptive, concise writing. While the authors don't grammatically need 2 paragraphs, the paragraph break helps communicate pacing.
   
   

   1. camera direction
      
      The action lines can convey camera placement/motion directly, or indirectly.
      

      Example 5: Excellent example of indirect camera placement from David Koepp's Panic Room:
      
      EXT. WEST 83RD STREET - DAY
      
      Race across a field of PEDESTRIANS to pick up three women hurrying down the sidewalk. LYDIA LYNCH, a real estate broker, vaults down the sidewalk, she's got a hell of a stride. MEG ALTMAN, thirtyish, struggles to keep up with her, she's tall, wafer-thin, pale as a ghost. SARAH, a nine year old girl, flat out runs to keep up, dribbling a basketball as she goes. The kid's athletic, much tougher than Meg, who she resembles.
      
      See how the description suggests a camera starting from an establishing wide shot then zooming or pushing into a medium shot?
      

   2. text on screen
      

      Example 6: From Tony Kushner's Lincoln:
      
      TITLE:
      

      JANUARY, 1865
      TWO MONTHS HAVE PASSED SINCE ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S RE-ELECTION THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR IS NOW IN ITS FOURTH YEAR

      
      EXT. A SHIP AT SEA - NIGHT
      
      A huge, dark, strange-looking steamship, part wood and part iron, turreted like a giant ironclad monitor, is plowing through the choppy black waters of an open sea. Lincoln is alone, in darkness, on the deck, which has no railing, open to the sea. The ship’s tearing through rough water, but there’s little pitching, wind or spray. The deck is dominated by the immense black gunnery turret.
      
      In place of TITLE, you can also say SUPER for example.
      
   3. close ups
      

      Example 7: From Robert Towne's Chinatown (page 11):
      
      INT. GLOVE COMPARTMENT
      
      consists of a small mountain of Ingersoll pocket watches. The cheap price tags are still on them. Gittes pulls out one. He absently winds it, checks the time with his own watch. It's 9:37 as he walks to Mulwray's car and places it behind the front wheel of Mulwray's car. He yawns again and heads back to his own car.
      
      GITTES
      
      arrives whistling, opens the door with "J.J. GITTES AND ASSOCIATES - DISCREET INVESTIGATION" on it.
      
      This passage does a lot. First, the action lines following the first slug line indirectly indicates a number of close-ups, e.g., the time of 9:37. The secondary slug line is a character cue, so that indicates that the camera is to track that character (Gittes, the protagonist of the story).
      

4. Dialogue
   

   In a play, almost all the information comprising the story is conveyed via dialogue. In film, that is generally not true, as visuals play such a vital role. None-the-less, dialogue is how we learn the personality of each character, what kind of person they are.
   
   Example 8: From Theodore Melfi's St. Vincent (pages 3-4):
   
   
   Vin’s sitting across from a mortgage counselor, TERRY. He’s reviewing paperwork.
   
   

   VINCENT
   (pointing)
   That one there. Says the line’s been frozen.

   
   Terry shuffles.
   
   

   TERRY
   Uh-huh. Got it. Yes. Let’s see...so...with these reverse mortgages you can only borrow a percentage of the equity you have in the house. That’s called the loan-to-value.
   
   VINCENT
   Don’t need a financial seminar. I own the damn thing outright. 40 years.

   
   We get a clear sense of what a crotchity old dude Vincent (the protagonist) is, as well as what his "external" need is (money). In the remainder, we see what his "internal" need is (love and a sense of family).
   
   
   1. email/SMS
      
      There is a lot of email in Spike Jonze's Her, however the script has it all vocalized using a "text voice".
      
      Example 9: From Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl:
      
      
      

      TANNERGo talk to Tommy. I’ll draw up the contracts.
      

      
      NICK’s phone text buzzes. He looks at it: holds up the screen: TOMMY O’HARA with a phone number. Tanner grins.
      
      

      TANNER (CONT’D)Told you you came to the right guy.
      

      
      
   2. singing
      
      Example 10: An example of singing a song is given in John August's Frankenweenie:
      
      
      Burgemeister walks away from Elsa leaving her alone at the microphone.
      
      Nervous, she looks out over the crowd.
      
      Elsa starts to sing.
      
      

      ELSA
      (singing)Praise be New Holland,
      Streets so wide and sidewalks clean,
      Modest homes at modest prices,
      Everyone’s urban dream,
      Praise be New Holland,
      Happy children free from tears,
      Free from all the worlds dangers,
      Free from crime and free from strangers,

      
      The crowd is so rapt that no one notices the big THUNDERSTORM brewing overhead.
      
      Note the italics in the lyrics. I didn't add them. They are in the original script.
      
   3. parentheticals
      
      These go underneath the character cue (which is always in all caps). They are also called "wrylies" because (at least for older scripts) their most common use was to tell the actor that the tone of the line is wry humor (wryly). In general, parentheticals are used in case a line of dialogue has an ambiguous meaning, but can also be used for action, if it is only a word or two.
      
      Example 11: From Peter Berg's The Losers:
      
      
      EXT. HUMVEE (MOVING) -- DAY
      
      RIPPING ACROSS THE DESERT. Pooch drives, Clay shotgun, others in the back. Passing a COMPUTER TABLET to Jensen:
      
      

      CLAYAuthenticate and backtrace.
      
      POOCH
      (grumbling)
      Send us out to the middle of nowhere to "wait for instructions"...
      
      JENSEN
      (finishes checking)
      We're good, this baby came out of the Kandahar Spook Station, controller's codename is Max.
      

      
      The first parenthetical indicates that the line is to be spoken in an annoyed voice. The second parenthetical actually indicates action, that Jensen finishes checking something on the laptop.
      

If this post interests you, here are some books that might help you go further:

• Charles Deemer's Screenwright is available free online, as well available as a (cheap, used) paperback. While a fine introduction to screenplay narrative structure, there is little on formatting there.
• David Trottier’s The Screenwriter’s Bible, now in its 6th edition, is summarized on johnaugust.com. I've seen older editions (which are also good) sell on amazon.com for as low as one penny. This introduces both script structure and also script formatting.
  
• Christopher Riley's The Hollywood Standard has a lot of detail on script format questions as does David Trottier’s Dr Format Tells All.
  
• Ellen Sandler's The TV Writer's Workbook, if you are interested in sit-com writing. While a fine introduction to sit-com screenplay structure, there is little on TV script formatting there. However, her website does have an example script from an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond she wrote.
  

When you find a script online, it is often a "production script", which is not quite the same as a "spec script". Except for Flynn's script, below are some feature-length scripts formatted as a spec script that you can study to try to learn how the expert's write:

• Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig's "Bridesmaids" (2011),
  
• David Koepp, "Panic Room" (2000),
  
• Theodore Melfi "St. Vincent" (2014)
• John August's "Go" (1997) or "Frankenweenie" (2012),
  
• Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl" (2013) - this script is a final production draft, which is a modified version of the original script which includes scene numbers in the margins used by the production crew. Just ignore them.
  
• Tony Kushner, "Lincoln" (2011) available at amazon.com (and online)
• Peter Berg's "The Losers" (2010)
• Robert Towne's "Chinatown" (1973)

Spike Jonze's "Her" is also excellent and available online.

Making of "The Incompatibles"

This post is a discussion of the making of the video The Incompatibles, an AFG project from wdj on Vimeo.

The video "The Incompatibles" is the first project from the Annapolis Filmmaking Group, a meetup.com group founded by James Angiola. We meet once or twice a month in the Factor's Row restaurant, who have been very generous in giving us meeting space.

James decided to run the group in a workshop fashion, to learn filmmaking by doing. We collected some scripts and decided the first project would be a modification of a public domain script written by Horace Holley in 1916 titled "The Incompatibles".

Next, we did a table read and the group decided that the script needed to be updated in language. I volunteered to take first crack at it but also incorporated suggestions from others. After this, we did another table read where more suggestions were made, and we selected actors (2 male, one female) and crew from the AFG members, and set a date for the shoot. Ultimately, the script ended up as 8 pages. Two other (completely different) revisions were submitted by other members and the plan is they will be made in future meetings.

Before the shoot, the female lead dropped out. Instead of canceling the shoot, I took about an hour out of one morning and rewrote the script without the need of that actor, resulting in a 2 page script. It's just a silly comedy, whcih hopefully some of you find a little amusing. We shot that script using AFG and the edited video is slightly over 3 minutes.

Cast:
* Fred - Benjamin Walker
* George - Attral Platte
* Waitress - Erica Chambers

Crew:
* sound, camera assistant - JT Torres
* director/camera/editor/co-writer - David Joyner

Sources:
* Original script:
Horace Holley "The Incompatibles" (1916)
* Sound track:
Pavel Svimba - Teknikal Problems
license: CC by-nc-sa-3.0

There are problems with the finished edit. I'm not very good at color-correction and it shows, focus was in and out on the waitress (I don't know why), and some coverage was missing. Audio was hampered by my lack of skill at syncing h4n audio to on-camera audio, and the AC running full blast. (This was shot on a hot summer night.) None-the-less, the actors were terrific and, as far as I'm concerned, a fun learning experience! Thanks to everyone involved, including my grand-daughter Addie who lent me her favorite doll for the final shot!

Notes on Randy Baker's Playwriting II class

Randy Baker taught a playwriting class recently at the Writer's Center in Bethesda MD. He's a great teacher, the class was excellent, and here are some very rough notes (along with my own embellishments and possible mistakes) that I took during the class.

A playwright is a craftsman or builder of plays. The learning is in the doing. Many well-known playwrights actually dropped out of school. Playwrights learn by the doing.

We will structure the class by approaching it from the direction of Aristotle. He wrote in 300 BC the Poetics, and he discussed tragedies and what makes the story great.

What do we, our animal self, want from a story? We want it to move us emotionally.

Aristotle split what makes the play work into six categories:

1. plot or mythos (not quite the same as narrative plot),
   
2. character or ethos (not quite the same as a dramatic character),
   
3. thought or theme or dianoia (not quite the same as narrative theme),
   
4. music or melos,
   
5. diction or lexis (see also dialogue),
   
6. spectacle or opsis,
   

in order of importance.

In modern playwriting we often swap 1) and 2) in importance.

What does drama do? Drama is not an imitation of a thing but rather of an action.

For Aristotle, plot means something different than what we think of it. For him, plot means mythos. Mythos - myth or believe, or world-view perspective. For him, character means something else as well. For him, character was ethos, their a morality, their ethics, and how that affects their world view.

In modern playwriting, music could be referred to as tonality or poetry of the play.

Diction - the words we use, the type of dialogue.

Spectacle - the visuals, the set design, the location, the physical space used to convey the story. Where are the characters? What are they wearing?

Theater is defined by its limitations. It is analogous to the older history of poetry - when it was limited to meter. Aristotle's three unities:

• time - used to be required for the play to take place in 24 hours,
  
• place - used to required it to take place in one location,
  
• action - used to require it to have only one plot line (no B-story or C story).
  

For a recent example of this, consider the film Locke, written and directed by Steven Knight, starring Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy plays Ivan Locke who, years earlier, had an affair with a co-worker Bethan. Quoting from the plot section of the wikipedia page for Locke:

Over the course of the two-hour drive from Birmingham to London, Locke holds a total of 36 phone calls with his boss and a colleague, Donal, to ensure the pour is successful, with his wife Katrina to confess his infidelity, his son, and with Bethan to reassure her during her labour. During these calls, he is fired from his job, kicked out of his house by his wife, and asked by his older son to return home. He coaches his assistant Donal through preparing the pour despite several major setbacks, and has imaginary conversations with his father, whom he envisions as a passenger in the back seat of his car. When he is close to the hospital, Locke learns of the successful birth of his new baby.

We see then that Aristotle's time, place and action requirements are satisfied with Locke.