Re: Scriptnotes 134: New Format
We can all find something useful out of having "INT." "EXT" but it's essentially an add-on by a non-writer. As you move into production, some peripheral writing is done that reinterprets the story, from board strips to the editing bay.
An exec doesn't need to know any of that. INSIDE THE CAR, DRIVING should be it. She is not an AD seeing how to parse out the work for the crew.
I insist we don't need a new format so much as we need to make it flexible, hide what we don't need. F.i., a good rule would be, characters excepted, everything else that completes itself with a click should remain hidden until switching into production mode.
Take that idea a little further and it could have infinite value on set: An actor could hide and collapse all his scenes, f.i., the way Google view tells you how many times a name appears on a book.
A great rule should be to make the read swift and short, with flexible margins and font sizes.
A simple improvement should be if one word of dialog goes to the next line and that was the last word, it should go back up to the previous line, f.i. Or if a description exceeds five lines, it should shrink slightly but be able to pop up the way you can look up a word in Mac. We could still keep essential plot points in regular font size by making a highlight and double click on all-caps when writing, f.i.
Some of these things are doable. I'm not so sure about eliminating page count. John and Craig are putting too much hope on logic, in an industry renowned for its lack of one - a movie set is a treasure trove of things that have outlived its usefulness - and even outside of movies, f.i., I'm not sure if my typing is much more efficient in a qwerty keyboard, but is that going to change anytime soon?
Originally posted by odocoileus
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We can all find something useful out of having "INT." "EXT" but it's essentially an add-on by a non-writer. As you move into production, some peripheral writing is done that reinterprets the story, from board strips to the editing bay.
An exec doesn't need to know any of that. INSIDE THE CAR, DRIVING should be it. She is not an AD seeing how to parse out the work for the crew.
I insist we don't need a new format so much as we need to make it flexible, hide what we don't need. F.i., a good rule would be, characters excepted, everything else that completes itself with a click should remain hidden until switching into production mode.
Take that idea a little further and it could have infinite value on set: An actor could hide and collapse all his scenes, f.i., the way Google view tells you how many times a name appears on a book.
A great rule should be to make the read swift and short, with flexible margins and font sizes.
A simple improvement should be if one word of dialog goes to the next line and that was the last word, it should go back up to the previous line, f.i. Or if a description exceeds five lines, it should shrink slightly but be able to pop up the way you can look up a word in Mac. We could still keep essential plot points in regular font size by making a highlight and double click on all-caps when writing, f.i.
Some of these things are doable. I'm not so sure about eliminating page count. John and Craig are putting too much hope on logic, in an industry renowned for its lack of one - a movie set is a treasure trove of things that have outlived its usefulness - and even outside of movies, f.i., I'm not sure if my typing is much more efficient in a qwerty keyboard, but is that going to change anytime soon?
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