In contemporary format, as you'll soon learn, camera angles or any mention of "the camera" at all are almost never included.
7 EXT. PODIUM OF AMPHITHEATRE - DAY BEN (continuing) The purpose, my fellow graduates - the purpose is - He stops, trying to think of the word. 8 CLOSEUP - BEN He begins to sweat. 9 SHOT - AMPHITHEATRE AUDIENCE watching. 10 SHOT - PODIUM of AMPHITHEATRE Ben's hands searching through the pages of his speech. The pages begin to blow away in the wind. 11 SHOT - AMPHITHEATRE AUDIENCE - DAY staring.
Twenty years later, specific camera movement was still included in the screenplay format but now it was indicated a bit differently, as illustrated in this example from Blue Velvet (1986):
1. EXT. BEAUMONTS' FRONT LAWN - DAY Blue skies. PAN SLOWLY DOWN to clean white picket fence, with beautiful red roses in front of it. Birds CHIRP in the distance. A faint sprinkler SOUND is heard. Very sweet MUSIC is playing. DISSOLVE TO: 2. EXT. TREE - DAY A songbird SINGS in the tree. DISSOLVE TO: 3. EXT. CROSSWALK - SHADY STREET - DAY A very clean uniformed, smiling POLICEMAN with arms outstretched allows clean happy SCHOOL CHILDREN to cross the street safely. DISSOLVE TO: 4. EXT. SHADY STREET - DAY A bright red gorgeous fire engine is moving very slowly down the street. We MOVE IN to see the happy face of a FIREMAN. DISSOLVE TO:
A particular fashion in 1980s screenplays was the use of the slugline "ANGLE ON" or "ANOTHER ANGLE", or using a character's name as the slugline when the character is the focus of the shot, as shown in this excerpt from Lethal Weapon (1987):
6 INT. HOUSE - BATHROOM 6 A real gun, a .38 Police Special, dangling in its hol- ster from the back of a chair. Next to it -- A real badge, gleaming in the light. It identifies its owner as LAPD Robbery/Homicide. 7 ANOTHER ANGLE 7 A birthday cake comes INTO FRAME. A set of matronly hands places it directly in front of -- 8 DETECTIVE ROGER MURTAUGH 8 Seated in the bathtub. He groans, throws a towel over himself, and mutters in mock indignation: Roger is tough: An old-fashioned fighter, wears his past like a scar. Piercing eyes; cynical. He is surrounded by his family; wife and three children, names and ages as follows: TRISH: Roughly thirty-eight. She used to be a stunner. NICK: Ten years old. Precocious. CARRIE: Age seven. Eyes like saucers. Adorable. RIANNE: Heartbreaker stuff, Seventeen. Takes your breath away folks. The cake is a real beauty. ... CUT TO: 9 EXT. SIMI VALLEY - MORNING 9
All of the format above is out of fashion today, and a beginning screenwriter who submitted a script using the formats above would be dismissed unread as a rank amateur. What is different now? Go back to text for the correct format to use today.
Consider, for example, this section from Fargo (1996):
UPSTAIRS BEDROOM As the two men enter, a door at the far side is slamming shut. A cord snakes in under the door. MASTER BATHROOM Jean, sobbing, frantically pushes at buttons on the princess phone. The phone pops out of her hands, jangles across the tile floor, smashes against the door and then bounces away, its cord ripped free. With a groaning sound, the door shifts in its frame. BEDROOM Grimsrud has a crowbar jammed in between the bathroom door and frame, and is working it. BATHROOM Jean crosses to a high window above the toilet and throws it open. Snow that had drifted against the window sifts lightly in. Jean steps up onto the toilet. The door creaks, moving as one piece in its frame. Jean glances back as she steps up from the toilet seat to the tank. The groaning of the door ends with the wood around its knob splintering and the knob itself falling out onto the floor. The door swings open. Grimsrud and Carl enter.
This is great, convenient shorthand and since the Coen brothers are the writer and director, there's no problem. But if you sent a script in this abbreviated format to a producer or agent, you'd be called for it if lucky, and more likely would not hear from them again because they quickly deep-sixed your script.
You must write in the "master scene format" in fashion today until it once again changes and a new format style comes in vogue. Sometimes I think this constantly changing format is a Hollywood plot to keep the outsiders guessing.
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