Changing Screenplay Format


For most of the history of film, screenplay format has included camera angles. Even today writers in other fields express reluctance to try screenwriting because "I don't want to have to learn all those camera angles."

In contemporary format, as you'll soon learn, camera angles or any mention of "the camera" at all are almost never included.

Formats Now Out of Fashion

For example, in The Graduate (1967), notice how the script makes explicit mention of camera angles and specific shots in the slugline. Also notice the use of scene numbers, which are used in production scripts only and therefore are not used in the spec scripts submitted by writers.

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.

Caution

A word of caution. You cannot depend on reading contemporary scripts for correct format for a variety of reasons. The two most important are:

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.

[BACK TO TEXT]


MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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