Most shoots go over budget and over time causing the schedule to be reworked on the fly to better utilize the remaining shooting days. When shooting a film - you are always under the pump to get it done on budget. There are soooooo many variables that can and invariably do go wrong that your shooting schedule is almost ALWAYS completely out of whack with how you planned. It's called the magic-hour - it looks amazing when you shoot the sun either dipping behind or rising from the horizon - but to schedule a shoot to capture that sunlight requires dedicating almost an entire day to having everything ready to shoot within that one hour window. I don't often write about RULES in screenwriting - mostly about principles - the difference obvious - but here's one of the few RULES of screenwriting.ĭusk lasts about 1-hour max. I often see - MORNING or EVENING or DUSK written in slug-lines. This lets us know that the train is in motion. When writing a location for a vehicle that can move, such as a car, train, plane etc, it's important to let us know if it is MOVING or PARKED - you can also use STATIONARY for things like PLANES etc. It says that we are OUTSIDE Mark's car that is parked in Times Square, looking in. The slug-line written like this lets us know that we are INSIDE looking OUT - not OUTSIDE looking IN. This slug-line says that the scene takes place INSIDE Mark's car and that Mark's car is parked in Times Square. This is used when your scene takes places INSIDE something, but it is also important to know that this INTERNAL location is OUTSIDE somewhere. written at the start of a slug-line - what's that all about? The clearer the setting - the less time the reader spends trying to orientate themselves in the scene. The takeaway? - Be specific with your slug-lines - they set up the scene for the reader. You can recall vague notions of what it was about, and sure you might recall an emotion - but all-in-all it's broken and dis-jointed. Other scripts I come away from and it's like trying to remember a dream from a year ago. Some scripts I come away from with a very clear sense of the world the writer intended to create. The easier it is to visualize the environment, characters, and the events that take place, the better your script will read. Until your reader KNOWS where the scene is set, they are unable to visualize the scene properly.Įverything you write should be visual. When your slug-line lacks detail, the reader goes into the scene searching for clues as to where the location is. Whose house is it, and what part of the house are we in? This slug-line lacks some necessary detail. The purpose of the slug-line is to paint the scene in the most concise way possible.īut you don't want to be too concise with your slug-line.įor example - I often see INT. If, say, you have a character walking through the woods - it would be sufficient to write You don't have to have a major location and a minor location. MAJOR LOCATION lets us know the general area, while the MINOR LOCATION gives us a more specific understanding of the immediate environs of the scene. MAJOR LOCATION - MINOR LOCATION - DAY/NIGHT The simplified formatting looks like this. The SLUGLINE is a simplified format for letting producers know the location of the scene. Quite a simple post today - but an area that evidently needs to be addressed as I see far too many amateur screen-writers getting these wrong. The following are a series of concise screenwriting tips. I do a lot of coverage of screenplays these days.
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