Spec Screenplays Versus Shooting Screenplays Versus Continuity Screenplays...

[Jack Lynt]

So of course I truly do not want to break the I.T. rule against linking to another (in this case vaguely) similar webforum. I do not want to do that. I hope that I am doing this in a legitimate fashion acceptable to the I.T. TOS. I only cite the poster's I.D. for the sake of properly citing the author and the author's intellectual property, I suppose, properly. I truly hope that this is a legitate action and a way of presenting it here properly...

...because it's been really bugging me.

What odocoileus says seems contrary to what I thought I'd learned here on I.T. But he/she seems to speak from authority. So is he/she spreading misinformation? Or am I simply confused about what I thought I'd learned here from the pros on I.T? Or is there actually no contradiction between what odocoileus says and what you experienced pros have said here on I.T?

Please set me straight.

So, the OP on some writing forum asked about finding spec scripts online to read and to model their own scripts upon. Well, something like that.

In response...

odocoileus wrote:

The shooting script is the script. The only difference is that shooting scripts have numbered scenes. Other than that, they're the same.

odocoileus wrote:

This is a widespread misconception promoted by people who don't actually work in the film industry. Of course you can use shooting scripts as a model for format, storytelling approaches, how to stage scenes, and so on. No one is ever thrown by an occasional camera angle or POV shot. No one. Just not an issue.
The final draft of that script had everything you describe. The director didn't go through and add it. The writer put it in from the very beginning.

odocoileus wrote:

Of course new writers should use shooting scripts as models. Shooting scripts are what everyone reads and what everyone is familiar with. If you get staffed on a TV show, you'll be expected to write like that, right out of the gate. Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't actually work in the Hollywood film and television industry. You want the pros' job, you do what the pros do. No training wheels.

Neal posted above about the confusion between continuity scripts and shooting scripts; that's part of the problem. Continuity scripts specify every shot and sound effect. Continuity scripts are a record of the finished film for copyright and other legal purposes, assembled after a film is edited and ready for distribution.

odocoileuse wrote:

Most of the scripts that are available are shooting scripts; they're fine to learn from and to imitate. Most pro scripts have the occasional camera angle; it's not a big deal, no one in the Hollywood film industry worries about that. Telling people they can't learn from these or imitate them is bad advice.

Most the work in Hollywood, for actors, writers, and directors, is in single camera episodic television. So everyone has seen those scripts and is familiar with that format. Almost all those scripts have a few camera angles. The occasional close-up, tracking shot, or angle-on in a script doesn't bother anyone. Just not an issue.

Directors don't go through scripts and add camera angles, that's a misconception. Directors work from shot lists and sometimes storyboards.

If you see a script with every shot and camera movement specified, you're looking at a continuity script, not a shooting script. Continuity scripts are assembled after the film is finished, for copyright and other legal purposes. No one should be imitating the formatting in continuity scripts. That should be clear enough.

Script readers in Hollywood do coverage on a wide variety of stuff. Feature and pilot scripts from established pros, feature and pilot scripts from aspiring newcomers, plus plays, novels, magazine articles, biographies, comic books, short stories. The readers are focused on the story, the characters, the way this particular piece of material fits in with the stated criteria and the overall goals of whoever they're reading for. Camera angles just don't come up as an issue.

Pretty much everything you've posted above is wrong. I'm (morbidly) curious as to where you got your information.

So what gives? Is odocoileuse mistaken? Is he/she correct? Am I confused? What is the truth?

Thanks!

 

[Guanto]

[delete]

 

[Guanto]

Holy sh*t Guanto . You're passion in a bag. And it's all good and positive and helpful passion too. Very nice sir.

Waiting for my sound designer to get some files back to me, the lul is killing me so I meander... and look what happens.

All I know my friend, is that when I read someone else's script, I like it better when camera moves are included. I don't have to agree with the moves, but if I have some idea of what the writer was thinking, I actually prefer it.

As long as you now realize a jury of your peers, your initial scenario of the room full of filmmakers, as well as the ominous godheads sitting atop their dream crushing thrones upon high, do not prefer this, for the reasons I mentioned, and you have more insight into why they are dinging you for things like camera moves, instead of experiencing your story like you want them too.

Oh you should be on my set .

I don't have to be, I saw your Script Supervisors "if he's doing it in a way that is not standard or not the way I would do it" cry for help in your documentary. LOL.

And camera angles make me fu**ing excited, to think about my movie that way.

Me too! Except I put all of that, and more, in the Shooting Script. As an aside, when you relegate the pertinent components to their appropriate mediums you may also be surprised at how it makes you look at your story in different and deeper ways. All the back and forth between the two documents is like super sleuth troubleshooting, it has revealed so many holes and given rise to so many better ideas in my stuff I could have never seen in any other way. Heck... maybe this is the true source of my appreciation of the segregation.

You're a true evangelist, a nice guy. There are not enough of you in the filmmaking community.

You are going to continue to do cool things and feel good about them either way, I just wanted to help paint a clearer picture (at your indirect request) as to why things are the way they are since there is truly very functional and efficient reasoning behind it -- as opposed to why car dealers are allowed to inscribe sorcery into their scrolls of sticker prices... or why we spell GNAT with a G.

The fact that you have a bit of an ongoing inner circle production house also makes all of this a little bit less relevant, as that is a very fortunate and rare circumstance. I often think I have it that way too, but then I look around and see I am the only one whose life is on hold and who doesn't sleep more than 4 hours a day and who only wants to be working on the movie every second... and I realize it's a production house of one, with some people to bounce ideas off of. Can't blame them though, I mean there is the whole I'm batshit crazy thing and all.

Cheers mate.

p.s.

Now... about the use of the phrase "We see such and such in a such and such" in your screenplays... [DUN dun DUN!]