No CONTINUEDs...
afac81a said:
I was on a couple of web pages and noticed that alot of people are not even using CUT TO: or DISSOLVE TO: they are just putting CONTINUED on the bottom of the page. Should I just delete all of the cut to's and dissolve to's and just put continued on the bottom of the page?
Again, you'll only see the use of CONTINUEDs (proper use that is) on a shooting script... I really can't tell from your posts and what you say the interested party has told you about formatting whether he's legit or not... If he's some kind of producer (even low level), it would make sense that he would want the screenplay formatted correctly before passing it on ASSUMING that your formatting is a mess.
Having said that...
If your script is a SPEC, I would take out ALL the CUT TO:s and ALL the CONTINUEDs and only sparingly use DISSOLVE TO: when you want to show a SIGNIFICANT passage of time...
As clive says however, if the script IS THAT GOOD, NOBODY is going to be worried about formatting unless of course all your formatting is off i.e., wrong font, wrong use of slug lines, etc...
If however, the only problem is the use of CUT TO:s and DISSOLVE TO:s, this really isn't a problem at all and no producer that I know would simply want these taken out... They wouldn't even be worried about them if the rest of the script is outstanding...
If there are too many CUT TO:s, it would be a simple task to figure out how much time they are adding to your script but in normal circumstances, you just don't use them except in the shooting script which, the original screenwriter rarely writes anyway... Once the script is sold, it's going to go through rewrites which the original screenwriter may or may not do... From there, once the final rewrite is completed and accepted, the script is going to be broken down and turned into a shooting script... Again, most original screenwriters do not perform this function...
filmy