A2 the formats for pre-production processes
A screenplay shows the producers, actors and directors
exactly what is going to be shown on screen. It tells the complete story and
has all the dialogue and action included for each character.
At the start of every scene a slug line will be placed at the
top of the page to inform everyone reading it whether the scene is
exterior/interior, the locations and time of day. A slug line can also be
referred to as a master scene heading. The significance of having a slug line
is that it informs the person reading a lot of information about the scene
itself without taking any more space than three words which makes it very clear
and quick. The information in a slug line impacts the production in a positive
way because it gives it such a quick flow and is so easy to understand.
The conventions needed to follow the format of an industrial
standard screenplay are; capitalisation, cut to, scene headings, scene
description and character cues.
Capitalisation is when the characters are first introduced to the scene,
the character’s name needs to be capitalized and then afterwards they need to
be in lowercase when in a descriptive passage. A cut to is a transition between
scenes, not all writers use this technique because they argue that the
transition is implied by moving one scene to another. A scene heading is a slug
line which informs the location, exterior/interior and time of day. A scene
description is always below a scene heading or slug line, a scene description
implies what the settings are, who is there and what action is taking place. Finally,
character cues are where the name of the character is placed right above their
piece of dialogue so they know where to introduce their lines.
When a screenwriter is writing action the number one rule
that they should follow is to show and not to tell. In screenplay you have to
write an action to show how the character feels, doing etc. This is because the
action is limited to what the audience can see and hear.
Each screenplay is usually between ninety and a hundred and
twenty pages and each page usually comes to a minute on average. It’s on
average as a page with not much action may take less than a minute whereas a
page with a lot of action and dialogue takes a lot of time to film therefore
taking a bit more than a minute.
