Scriptnotes 134: New Format

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  • #61
    Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

    Originally posted by gregbeal View Post
    PDFs on an iPad still display page numbers. Why are they dead things?

    While I can see some obvious benefits in seeing percentages, what PDF reader currently displays percentages?

    Not quite sure how sequence counts will be that useful, given the wide variance in the number of sequences in scripts (and movies) and the different ways individual writers (and readers) could define or number sequences.

    While I certainly see the potential usefulness of a new format template, are you concerned that screenwriting could move from a primacy of writing/storytelling skills to a primacy of page design/storytelling skills?
    PDFs display page numbers because screenwriting software generates page numbers. It's not that they're dead because they don't exist... they do.

    It's dead because they're irrelevant. So are percentages.

    All that matters is sequences, IMO.

    No, I don't worry about writing skills becoming subordinate to page design skills. Funny thing about Hollywood... when you ask someone to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a document, they suddenly become really good at seeing through irrelevant crap.

    It's not about covering the food in ketchup. It's about freeing the writer from a mid-20th century format, which restrains our ability to write the movie as we wish.

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    • #62
      Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

      Originally posted by KodyChamberlain View Post
      It's my understanding that John and Craig aren't proposing doing away with the concept of a standard format, they're simply exploring the idea of a NEW standard format. Opening the door to a million different formats wouldn't make much sense.
      That is correct. This isn't an excuse to puke a bunch of post-modern deconstruction on to a page.

      It's an attempt to reimagine a master format that provides the modern screenwriter with more freedom to write a useful, text-based screenplay with optional AV tucked out of the way for reference. Nothing more, nothing less.

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      • #63
        Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

        Originally posted by Craig Mazin View Post
        All that matters is sequences, IMO.
        What will it mean for non-screenwriters when one feature script has 15 sequences and another has 100?

        Do you think that might be a problem for the non-screenwriters tasked with dealing with the script?

        When, for instance, a production designer needs to find a particular description, is it easier to point them to a sequence or to an individual page?

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        • #64
          Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

          Currently, this is what I'm imagining... which is hardly radical...

          The new format dispenses with concerns about overall page count. The new format is font optional... you can choose which font you'd like, with the caveat that the same concerns that apply to any printed material apply to screenplays-- readability counts.

          The screenplay is divided into sequences, not scenes based on location. Sluglines as we know them (INT. or EXT.) would be simplified to simpler or more normal descriptor headings.

          GEORGE'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

          PARKING LOT IN FRONT OF THE BAR - MORNING

          SOMEWHERE BETWEEN JERSEY AND MARYLAND - DARK

          or just

          ACROSS THE STREET

          or

          MEANWHILE, NEXT DOOR IN TINA'S ROOM

          Those would be grouped together as needed within a sequence.

          When the sequence is done, a page break is inserted, and a new sequence begins.

          Various text could be clickable to bring up media as desired.

          That's about the long and short of it. Well... almost.

          I think widening the dialogue column is a no brainer. The strip feel of the centered dialogue column feels clunky and disrupts the eye when reading text. There's no reason for it in the modern era. I have no problem differentiating it from action using some kind of indentation, but it's currently too extreme.

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          • #65
            Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

            Originally posted by gregbeal View Post
            What will it mean for non-screenwriters when one feature script has 15 sequences and another has 100?

            Do you think that might be a problem for the non-screenwriters tasked with dealing with the script?

            When, for instance, a production designer needs to find a particular description, is it easier to point them to a sequence or to an individual page?
            The same thing it means for non-screenwriters when one feature script is 90 pages and another is 140 pages.

            Although frankly, it's not possible to have 100 sequences in a single movie. That would be a gross misconception of what a sequence is.

            I think most new writers raised on movie-watching will have an innate sense of sequence. It's the current format that is *not* natural to what we experience when we watch movies.

            The opening tracking shot of The Player is a sequence.

            Or, in terms of the current format, a hodgepodge of INTS and EXTS

            Once you get into production, locations would be numbered.

            The number system would be much easier than the current 1-150 scene number scheme, which is annoying as hell.

            Sequence#.Location#

            So today we're shooting 4.9, 4.10 and 4.11.

            (That's sequence 4, locations 9, 10 and 11 within sequence 4).

            Tomorrow we shoot 1.1 and 9.1

            Much, much easier IMO. More intuitive... helps relate scene numbers to each other.

            Currently, scene 68 could be the end of a car chase, and scene 69 can be the beginning of a trial taking place one year later. Consecutive numbers, totally unrelated narrative sections.

            But not in a sequence/location method. Things are grouped by narrative.

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            • #66
              Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

              Originally posted by Craig Mazin View Post
              The same thing it means for non-screenwriters when one feature script is 90 pages and another is 140 pages.
              I don't believe this to be the case. It's certainly not the case on the amateur/pre-professional writer level.

              Originally posted by Craig Mazin View Post
              Although frankly, it's not possible to have 100 sequences in a single movie. That would be a gross misconception of what a sequence is.
              Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, I counted sequences in about 30-40 produced scripts ranging from the late 30s to the present (though the vast majority were from the 1980s). Sequences in the scripts ranged from the teens to near 100. Pretty sure that my definition of a sequence is similar to yours.

              Originally posted by Craig Mazin View Post
              I think most new writers raised on movie-watching will have an innate sense of sequence.
              I think not. In my experience of dealing with thousands of new writers, I'm seldom surprised by the lack of an innate sense of anything having to do with movies and screenplays displayed by all too many.

              Originally posted by Craig Mazin View Post
              The opening tracking shot of The Player is a sequence.

              Or, in terms of the current format, a hodgepodge of INTS and EXTS.
              As I mentioned earlier, I think we agree about what a sequence is.

              I have no problems with your description of how this new format would work in the production process. Makes sense to me. You just have to get everyone on the production side plus all the budgeting/production software folks onboard.

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              • #67
                Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

                Greg, a new format isn't going to make anyone out there any better. This format isn't designed to make amateurs or wannabes comfortable, any more than the current format is designed for that.

                A new format is designed to serve writers writing movies. The rest of world needs to adapt to what works for the people making movies.

                Not the other way around.

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                • #68
                  Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

                  I love the idea of widening the dialogue column and using a less severe indent. The current standard column drives me crazy. Also, this could help break the habit of some industry-side folks who "read down the middle" and miss action lines. I've seen notes from pro readers -- on my work and others' work -- which make it clear the action lines were glossed over.

                  Craig's ideas would better engage the reader and make them more likely to "get" the writer's vision.

                  As for sequences, I'm sure there's a percentage of newbies who don't have an innate sense of sequences. They also don't have an innate sense of structure (first acts 50 pages long) or dialogue, or character, etc. etc.

                  However, I agree with Craig that a percentage of newbies do. Example: my very first practice script, an adaptation of my unpublished novel, was written before I started educating myself on sequences, structure, etc. When I doubled back to look at it I was amazed to see how I had intuitively hit these benchmarks.

                  Even non-screenwriters, when reading a script, can sense when an an act or scene or sequence is too long, too abrupt, or meanders. Because we've all internalized these things by watching movies.

                  Every industry involved with media has evolved, adapted to, and integrated new technology in their communications. Why not the film industry?
                  Last edited by sc111; 04-10-2014, 08:05 AM.
                  Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

                  Comment


                  • #69
                    Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

                    Originally posted by odocoileus View Post
                    Yes.

                    I recently read N.N. Taleb's Antifragile. One of his ideas is that we should wary about abandoning tried-and-true solutions to problems. The old approaches are likely to have hidden benefits, while the new approaches may have hidden flaws.

                    Standard screenplay format works fairly well for actors as is. In the acting classes I've taken recently, I would retype the scenes we were doing in Movie Magic and put the printed pages in pre-creased 9 1/2 x 11" covers.
                    The format was perfect for marking up the script for blocking, line emphasis, performance notes, props, etc. This worked much better than photocopied pages from a scene book.

                    That's the thing about standard format. It works quite well during production. All the different departments know how to get the information they need, because the same information is always in the same place. The white space and margins allow for plenty of hand written notes.

                    My understanding is that no one is proposing changes to the production format. The proposed changes are for making scripts easier to read, and easier for communicating the writer's vision of the film.

                    Now, aside from a more readable font, I wonder what would make scripts easier to read? I've been looking at various scripts published in book or magazine form. The most common approach is to format these book versions just like published plays. Are scripts easier to read this way? Not in my experience, but maybe for others?

                    Mazin was talking about clicking on elements of the script to get images and audio. I'm guessing this would just be hyperlinks on scene headings, action lines, or dialogue. Either the entire line, or individual words in the line. Click, and the image pops up, or the song plays. That way, the images, audio, music , are available if you're interested, but don't interrupt the reading experience.
                    Great points. The standard format best serves production. Since only a small percentage of all scripts circulating the industry ever get to that stage (1%? 5% 10%?) it shouldn't be too hard to adapt those green-lighted scripts to the old-school format at that time.

                    The script-culling process involves a far greater number of scripts circulated to different sets of people -- especially investors and marketing people -- who are not concerned about production mechanics in the early stages. They're concerned about the screen-worthiness of scripts.

                    There's something else to consider -- as a global society we are all changing the way we consume and digest information.

                    These days, college Required 'Reading' Lists include videos professors upload to Youtube. Textbooks are going digital and employ some of the tools Craig is talking about -- music, multi-photo presentations (which are cost-prohibitive with printed books), and video. Upcoming generations -- with their tablets and smart phones -- are rapidly moving away from text-only materials. These people will soon be working in the film industry.

                    There's a reason why the old adage 'a picture is worth a thousand words' still applies. Studies show our brains process information relayed in an image a thousand times faster, and more accurately, than the written word. Why? Because the first five years or so of our lives we take in information visually before we master spoken and written language. Our brains are wired far better for visuals.

                    Besides, isn't this the reason why the movie industry exploded virtually overnight a century ago? People prefer images over text.
                    Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

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                    • #70
                      Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

                      So is this a version of a storyboard?

                      And what would be the advantage of a script that includes images versus a script + scenes illustrated in a storyboard format, or are they the same?

                      Purely from my own impatient reader's point of view, I don't see the purpose of simply illustrating a script with images. If the logline says "EXT. - THE TOP OF MOUNT FUJI," I would get that and want to continue reading, rather than click to see an image of the top of Mt. Fuji. Or am I missing something, what would that add to invoking the world of the script?

                      For a script based on an existing illustrated property like a graphic novel, or a story set in a distinct historical period, I think it could enhance a script to include images (cells from the novel) or vintage illustrations to invoke the period.

                      But I would think that a simplistic approach of describing a key element in the script plus adding an image to underscore that wouldn't add much to the reading experience.

                      A lot of directors do storyboard key scenes before shooting the film. Hitchcock for one was known to so clearly map out storyboards of scenes he wanted to shoot that they were near-matches for how the scenes appeared in the finished film.

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                      • #71
                        Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

                        Originally posted by castilleja32 View Post
                        So is this a version of a storyboard?

                        And what would be the advantage of a script that includes images versus a script + scenes illustrated in a storyboard format, or are they the same?

                        Purely from my own impatient reader's point of view, I don't see the purpose of simply illustrating a script with images. If the logline says "EXT. - THE TOP OF MOUNT FUJI," I would get that and want to continue reading, rather than click to see an image of the top of Mt. Fuji. Or am I missing something, what would that add to invoking the world of the script?

                        For a script based on an existing illustrated property like a graphic novel, or a story set in a distinct historical period, I think it could enhance a script to include images (cells from the novel) or vintage illustrations to invoke the period.

                        But I would think that a simplistic approach of describing a key element in the script plus adding an image to underscore that wouldn't add much to the reading experience.

                        A lot of directors do storyboard key scenes before shooting the film. Hitchcock for one was known to so clearly map out storyboards of scenes he wanted to shoot that they were near-matches for how the scenes appeared in the finished film.

                        Just my take on what Craig has described. It's not a story board at all because all of the add-ons are hidden. I think it gives the screenwriter an option to enrich the reading experience without adding camera angles or the kind of prose a novelist uses to help the reader visualize. Re your example, I'm a little foggy on what the top of Mount Fuji looks like. If you had a photo inbed I would click it.

                        For example, if I write:

                        EXT. Manhattan Skyline - Establishing - Day

                        An overcast day in mid-November.
                        Is everyone who reads this visualizing what I have in mind? Not likely. For those who are just fine with the image their own brain kicks out, they skip the photo and keep reading. For those who are not clear on how the skyline looks on an overcast day in mid-November, they click the inbedded tool.

                        Maybe Craig can whip up an example -- a visual aid to help us visualize how this works.
                        Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

                        Comment


                        • #72
                          Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

                          I think I'm resisting this because a lot of the fun for me in writing a script is creating the words that will invoke what I envision in a reader's mind's-eye.

                          So I work on how I describe things because I want to express them in a specific way, even if they're general settings or characters. I want to find just the right details that will bring them to life in the world of the script.

                          A scene I just wrote is set at a gaudy theme restaurant, and I could have just written that; but I wanted to make it more specific and funny and took some time to find the best way to describe it.

                          That's just my process, I doubt that anyone else cares about what goes into writing those few words. But that's what makes writing a script interesting for me. Maybe it would be just as effective to write that the setting is a theme restaurant, and then add a clip of one that's close to what I have in mind. But then why put so much energy into writing the description?

                          So the concept of illustrating a screenplay with pictures that elaborate on settings or other points in the script sort of eclipses the challenge for me in writing scripts (and what I've always enjoyed about them from the time I first started reading screenplays).

                          I actually like this concept much better for novels than for screenplays. There's just something about the spareness of the script form that's more like poetry than narrative.

                          It's like if instead of reading the William Carlos Williams poem The Red Wheelbarrow, embedded in the text would be a picture of a red wheelbarrow and some white chickens, with the caption, "so much depends on this." You'd get the idea of the poem but not the other dimension of the poem itself.

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                          • #73
                            Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

                            The visual link thing is a great idea - my current script is set against a backdrop of Australian football. The opening scenes are of a local junior football match, circa 1980s...

                            Hardly anyone in the US - or outside of Australia, possibly - would have a clue what this game looks like. But you need to get a sense of it so that when the scene reveals (at the end) that it's a girl, not a boy, central to a bone-crunching play, it makes sense. It has resonance.

                            A short link to a sample match in that opening description - 20 or 30 seconds max would be enough to get a good sense of the game - and would do wonders for setting up the world of this story.

                            It would be so hard to explain this game in a meaningful way otherwise - especially as it's a short scene, that is action driven. I don't want to bog it down with explanations.
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                            • #74
                              Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

                              Originally posted by castilleja32 View Post
                              I think I'm resisting this because a lot of the fun for me in writing a script is creating the words that will invoke what I envision in a reader's mind's-eye.

                              So I work on how I describe things because I want to express them in a specific way, even if they're general settings or characters. I want to find just the right details that will bring them to life in the world of the script.

                              A scene I just wrote is set at a gaudy theme restaurant, and I could have just written that; but I wanted to make it more specific and funny and took some time to find the best way to describe it.

                              That's just my process, I doubt that anyone else cares about what goes into writing those few words. But that's what makes writing a script interesting for me. Maybe it would be just as effective to write that the setting is a theme restaurant, and then add a clip of one that's close to what I have in mind. But then why put so much energy into writing the description?

                              So the concept of illustrating a screenplay with pictures that elaborate on settings or other points in the script sort of eclipses the challenge for me in writing scripts (and what I've always enjoyed about them from the time I first started reading screenplays).

                              I actually like this concept much better for novels than for screenplays. There's just something about the spareness of the script form that's more like poetry than narrative.

                              It's like if instead of reading the William Carlos Williams poem The Red Wheelbarrow, embedded in the text would be a picture of a red wheelbarrow and some white chickens, with the caption, "so much depends on this." You'd get the idea of the poem but not the other dimension of the poem itself.
                              I agree a screenplay is closest to a poem in terms of economy of language. But it's still a couple thousand miles away from poetry. And I say this as someone who has published poetry and loves the form. Besides -- prose fiction and poetry are rooted in the narrative form. Scripts are not.

                              Scripts are internal industry documents used in the inception stage of a project that will be executed in a visual medium. Using images to enhance this document makes sense.

                              We're not describing settings so the reader can imagine it and marvel at our word play. We're describing something that will be built as set for the shoot. The director will have final say. The set designer will have an opinion. The stylist, too. And other sundry folks in the development process. And after everyone puts in their two cents, what are the odds what you so painstakingly described ends up on the move screen?

                              I'm thinking using an image embed gives the writer a better chance of getting their original vision on the screen. Because, as I said above, our brains are wired to favor images over written words. Once the writer locks the reader's brain onto an image with a photo or video it's there and harder for them to reimagine it their own way.

                              Will some writers use it unnecessarily (like your red wagon example), of course some will. Will others try to use these tools to distract from a weak story, lousy dialogue, flimsy characters? Probably. But, like Craig said, industry professionals aren't easily fooled. No photo, no video, no sound effect can hide the fact a script - well - sucks.
                              Advice from writer, Kelly Sue DeConnick. "Try this: if you can replace your female character with a sexy lamp and the story still basically works, maybe you need another draft.-

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                              • #75
                                Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format

                                I don't think anyone is saying insert pictures of Mount Everest in your script.

                                If youre going to describe some sort of image we haven't seen before (like monsters or aliens or futuristic devices), why not provide a visual aide?

                                If you're going to suggest a specific song, why not provide a link for said song? I often find myself googling songs in scripts anyway. Why not provide your reader with a quick way to do so?

                                I also hate, hate, hate having to use INT and EXT. It's implied with whatever location you specify and, IMO, causes the reader's eyes to glaze over and skip scene headings altogether.

                                So why not just say INSIDE THE HOUSE or AT THE GRAND CANYON or BACK WITH ETHAN or SOMEWHERE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN. You get the point.

                                I think there are lots of promising ideas here. But none of them are attempting to tout form over content. This would simply provide a form that makes better sense for how scripts are consumed today.

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