A2 Templates For Scripts

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.