A Format To End All Formats?
Posted by Craig Mazin on 17 Nov 2005 at 09:15 pm | Tagged as: The Craft & Trade
Somewhere out there in the world, there’s an ultimate feature screenplay format sheet. I know that Warner Brothers has one, but that’s just them. I’ve seen a few in books here and there, but where did they get their numbers?
And why the hell do any of us care?
It’s really a matter of money. If we do our jobs well, someone is going to have to take our script and break it down into budgetable eighths of a page. They’ll have to create a schedule, where each day is no more than a certain amount of pages. Given that, regulating exactly how much shootable material there is per page would be nice. After all, how much shooting time does one page of nothing but two people talking in a restaurant cost?
Depends on your margins. Your font. Your line spacing.
Because professional screenwriters and amateur screenwriters all delight in masturbatory procrastination (including actual masturbation, henceforth to be known as “procrasturbation”), here’s my format sheet, approved by a real live 1st A.D. who employs this for all of the features he works on. Use it happily, knowing that your 105 page comedy really is a 105 page comedy, and not a 149 page time bomb.
With this format, you should achieve an approximate count of 50 lines per page.
Font: Courier New, 12 pt.
Top Margin: .6 inches Bottom Margin: 1.4 inches
Scene Headings (Slug Lines): Left Margin – 1.3 inches, Right Margin – 1 inch. One blank line before. Single-spaced.
Action Lines: Left Margin – 1.3 inches, Right Margin – 1.2 inches. One blank line before. Single-spaced.
Character Names: Left Margin – 3.3 inches, Right Margin – 1.0 inches. One blank line before. Single-spaced.
Dialogue: Left Margin – 2.3 inches, Right Margin – 2.7 inches. Single-spaced. (You hear me? SINGLE spaced. Not half-spaced. No one likes a cheater.)
Parentheticals (“Wrylies”): Left Margin – 2.8 inches, Right Margin – 3.5 inches. Single-spaced.
Transitions (e.g. “CUT TO:): Flush Right. Left Margin – 1.5 inches, Right Margin – 1 inch. One blank line before. Single-spaced.
Bottom “Continued”: Left Margin – 5.5 inches
Now go! Gaze upon the bloated monstrosities that were your once-slender screenplays! Cut! Cut! Cut!
Yeah but.. I bought FD for all that!
Yeah, but have you customized the FD presets? No? Get to work!
Yeah FD is over-rated. It’s great for production people but for writers it saves little time when you are actually going so far as to tweak the exact spacing of each element… and you are aren’t you?
Most sources stipulate 1 inch for top and bottom margins. So why does your real live 1st A.D. use .6 inch top margin and 1.4 inch bottom margin? What’s gained by moving the text-area upwards by .4 inches? Perhaps he likes to have a little extra space at the bottom to doodle on?
Some time ago, in a fit of masturbatory procrastination, I decided to make myself a Word screenwriting template. Not that I need one, I just wanted to see how servicable it’d be to use one. I collected numbers from various web-sources (including the Nicholl’s page, which I thought was supposed to be the industry standard) and they turned out to vary much more than I’d expected. Just about the only thing everyone seems to agree on are the margins (1 inch for top, bottom and right and 1.5 inches for left). And yeah, 3 inch line-length for dialogue seems to be preetty much the rule.
In a “normal” script you have a wider left hand margin (to allow for the binding). Your 1st A.D.’s right and left margins (for Action) are just about the same – that is to say, he keeps to the standard line-length but centers the text on the page. Again, I fail to see the rationale.
I can’t pinpoint what it is about his formatting that’d turn slender screenplays into bloated monstrosities. Perhaps he’s used to screenwriters cheating outrageously? Because his formatting appears to be essentially standard.
Hey, cool! Thanks for this, Craig. I actually just finished a rewrite yesterday. My 113-page script, it turns out, is really quite a lot more than that.
Do you put “CONTINUED’s” at the top and bottom of the page? I get 133 with them and 127 without.
I understand now why an A.D. would bother with margins. When it comes to the actual length of a script, page count doesn’t mean jack.
Thanks for the data, Craig.
FWIW, the numbers that impact the length of a script significantly are:
(1) Lines per page
(2) characters per line of Action
(3) characters per line of Dialogue
Lines per page (lpp) clearly having the biggest impact. It’s interesting that your AD pal has you using 50 lpp. That seems on the short side. WB is 55, Cole & Haag and FD default is 54.
Those 4 lpp can change the page count by up to 8 pages or more. From a casual sampling of produced scripts around the office, it seems that most scripts come out at 54 lpp, with a few at 52 lpp.
Any insight about why your AD likes 50 lpp?
I’ll check with Doug on why he arranged the top and bottom margins the way he did. My guess is that he’s found that 50 lines per page comes closer to the “one page a minute” rule of thumb than 54 lines per page.
We do use continueds on the top AND bottom of the page.
Anna, if you want to shift margins, go for it, as long as the net width and length of the text field doesn’t change. Doug’s formatting is clearly not standard, however, as it yields fewer lines per page than the FD standard or Cole & Haag.
For me anyway, the single largest impact on page count is Font.
What you say? — it’s Courier, 12 Point. Well, yeah, sure.
But, take my 114 page completed script, formated using standard Final Draft defaults, using Courier Final Draft font.
From the Format/Elements tab (for Buddha’s sake, don’t do this on your working copy, or you’ll be restoring from backup, or reformating for the next hour) switch every element to Courier New…
Ta da! My 114 page fast moving, twisted love story, is suddenly a 148 page epic.
Gulp.
Same thing happens if I switch to Courier Dark, the wonderful HP font.
The best (least pages) font I’ve got is, Courier Final Draft. So that’s what I use.
And no – I don’t have ANY of the special FD gimmicks turned on to put my letters closer together, or my lines closer together or anything. This is using the pure, plain vanilla Screenplay 1 template, in FD6 and FD7 (depending on which of my 3 computers I’m writing on). The only thing that changes is the Font.
Those of you using MS Word templates and Courier New, or other Courier Fonts, may find getting a buddy to send you a copy of the Courier FD fonts, worth an extra 30-35 pages in your page count.
114 pages. 148 pages. You do the math.
Hope this is userful to someone.
Just tried it with Dark Courier to make sure of my numbers. It was a little better with that font, but still sucked compared to Courier FD.
Here are my final numbers:
Courier Final Draft 114 to 114
Dark Courier 114 to 137 = 20% increase / 17% decrease in pages
Courier New 114 to 148 = 30% increase / 23% decrease in pages
Craig:
Math is not my strong point. Are inches, in this context, figured in tenths or eigths? I was under the impression that .6 inches plus 1.4 inches equals 2 inches.
Anyway.
My theory is that the cunning Doug has come up with formatting rules that lengthen scripts by 10% (or whatever it is) to ease things a bit for the director – and himself as well. By making the script pages slightly more sparse than FD or Cole & Haag stipulate – or rather by decreasing the number of lines – he gains time, that is: time on the set.
But it’d be fun to hear (or rather read) more about his method.
In this case, the page number is at .6, “CONTINUED” is at .8, and the text starts at 1.
What do you make of Terry Rossio’s thoughts on the matter?
Well crap. It didn’t take my HTML blah blah.
Here’s the link that was supposed to be there: http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp17.Fudging.html
Regarding the comments on font…Courier Final Draft takes the same amount of space as standard original Courier (precisely 10 pitch when using the 12-point size). Courier New (which I believe originated as a Microsoft font) has much looser spacing than the standard IBM/Apple Courier, which was the industry standard. You may swap our standard Courier with Courier Final Draft and your page count will be the same, but using Courier New will indeed bloat the size of your script.
I swear to christ, I have never, ever gotten that filthy Warner Brothers format to work. Every time I punch it into my MMScreenwriter settings, it all goes to hell.
I will try this, as formatting is one of the little things that haunt me …
just published this year, The Hollywood Standard. Available at numerous branches of the LA public library. Written by Christopher Riley, billed as the former head of the script dept. at Warners.
If there’s a last word on format, this is it.
Still no substitute for dictating your script to a “girl” from the typing pool while smoking a Chesterfield and drinking gin and tonic.
Anna:
The 1st DP has no real interest in the size of the script, beyond a sense of trying to accurately gauge what a “minute per page” is. He doesn’t come up with the amount of days, and if the production is undershooting on days, he’s gonna get shpanked.
Also, the decimels are tenths. .6 + 1.4 does equal 2.
Trey;
I don’t get what Terry’s after here. I mean, sooner or later, an A.D. is going to adjust the margins and the leading and so forth, and then it’s allllll over. Why bother? Better to be disciplined from the start, IMO. And if the first draft is long…defend its length while offering your own opinions on how to shorten it.
In response to Anna as to why you might want the right and left action margins the same -
JB -
So you’re saying, Microsoft even screwed up Courier?
Arrrrgh!
So, when you say the top margin is .6, is that from the top of the page to the page number or from the top of the page to the first element (action line, scene heading…)?
Also, are you including the page number (and the space below it) in the “50 lines per page” count?
Jeff:
All margin lengths are from the physical edge of the page. As long as you’ve got that right, it doesn’t matter how near or far the headers and page numbers are from the edge.
What? MORE formatting stuff to consider and contend with?
Your mother mated with a scorpion… . . .
B
Hmm. For some reason, with these settings, Movie Magic gives my “Approx # Lines on Page” as 49. The only way I can get it to read 50 is by changing one of those percentages underneath to 99.
I wonder if this is a PC vs. Mac issue, or are Mac users finding this, too?
…
Just figured it out, if anybody’s curious[1]. It is a Mac thing. If you check “Macintosh Compatibility Mode” at the bottom of the Page Layout screen. That changes the lines per page to 50.
[1] Hey, I’m an optimist.
Speaking as a one-time “girl from the typing pool” back in college, we re-write you. This is much easier once you’ve past out from the gin and tonics, the cigar extinguished by your own spittle. You wake up hungover and think you’re a genius, rather than just another drunken hack. I hope to have a girl of my own some day soon. Okay, back to procasturbating.–JGTH, “THINGS THEY WON’T TELL YOU IN FILM SCHOOL”
Bravo, JGTH. Wit and wisdom for the ages.
Arrgh more formatting wars, every single Studio, Reader, Script Consultant/Educator, Director or 1st AD seemingly has a differing opinion(s). And my off Hollywood/off TV, corporate productional work (hey, it’s a living) has a format all unto its own. But going by Christopher Riley gives me the least amount of pain, Cole & Haag way too dated. But whatever the 1st AD wants, he shall get. But no universal standard, excepting Riley, imho.
One last question: Do you leave checked that thing that thing lets five-or-more-letter words extend a little over the margin?
Actually, I’m not even sure why it’s a feature. I can’t imagine it makes much difference in page count.
CRAIG;
A fairly important question here. This format you’re talking about, this would be for a SHOOTING script no?
Reason I ask that – Frankly I can’t see how any script written in master shot is going to run a page a minute. Drafts written in master shot are a lot less specific, but one HELL of a lot more concise than shooting scripts.
A draft written in master shot will generally have just one slug per scene, where a shooting script might have ten numbered slugs to cover the ten specific shots that’re going to be used to cover that scene.
Which says to me that – those of us who’ve just finished a 110 to 120 page draft better be prepared to cut – cut – cut if it sells, because that 110 page draft, once it’s turned into a shooting script, may very well wind up cranking out a 150 page tome.
Or am I missin’ something here?
I just saw a great little blip from the Big Chill dvd where Lawrence Kasdan filmed the scenes with a stop watch because he had timed his whole script out to the minute. He knew where his overall length had to be for the studio and did not want to cut anything from his screenplay. So he directed most of those scenes with an emphasis on pacing to squeeze it all in. I guess it could only have come from a writer/director.
I am a bloatee (write novels too) and use every smoke and mirrors trick in the book. But it also depends on the material. There are some massive shooting scripts for pictures that have done extremely well in BO as well as critically. I think it also depends what the project is. Always good to have this discussed though so we now hoe various people approach the format issue.
Mike:
I think you’re missing something here.
What’s “master shot”? Seriously. I don’t know. I know of one way to write a script, and that way is used for my drafts and for the shooting scripts, and it’s a minute-a-page (allegedly).
CRAIG;
Writing in “Master Shot”, as I understand the term, is where, in a draft, you essentially “don’t sweat the details”.
(this applies ONLY to feature length s/p’s written on assignment before a director is attached, or spec’s, which of course don’t have a director attached almost by definition)
When writing in “master shot” you don’t call out, or even describe, each individual shot in a scene, each with it’s own individual slug line, (the way you would in a shooting script where every shot has to be specified and numbered, so that it can be scheduled and organized for shooting, tracked, and stored for editing).
Instead of providing each and every shot in a scene with its own slug and description, wacha do is, provide just ONE slug line for the entire scene, and then get right into, the dialog and whatever action beats are needed to describe what happens in that scene.
The rational offered by Newbies is this is how you keep from “stepping on the director’s toes”, but I don’t buy that.
The impression I get from pros is that the reason you write in “master shot” like this is that for one thing it’s efficient.
Directors really can, and dammed well are, going to figure out how many, and what particular kinds of shots, they think they’re going to need to cover a scene. They don’t need or want to have every shot in a scene spoon fed to them, and even if every individual shot is there on the page, they’re just going to ignore those particular shot choices, and come up with their own.
And so the question from a writer’s pov is, why go to all the work of breaking a scene down shot by shot, when the director, not only doesn’t need or even want you to do that for him, but is all but certain to just ignore everything you came up with in the way of shot choices to cover the scene anyway. You’re busting your hump for nothing.
There’s also the issue of the read. Readers don’t need to have every single shot in a scene described to them either, neither do producers. Writing in master shot frees you up a bit to focus more on impact. (And, I DO have to say that the few drafts I’ve managed to find written in master shot make for a heck of a lot more smooth and compelling reads.)
Lastly, and this is where this issue impacts this particular discussion, writing in master shot saves an ass-load on page length.
Not always (as per the usual the “rules” are more guidelines than hard and inviolable “rules”), but if you’re writing in master shot, since all you’re putting on the page is just ONE single slugline with a concise, compelling description of where the action is taking place, and what you’re leaving out is all the slugs for each of the individual shots that will eventually be added later to cover that scene, you wind up hitting the return key a hell of a lot less often, and wind up with a much shorter script.
That make more sense?
Hi, Craig… how you page format fit to A4 paper? I asked you because i’m from Argentina and here de standard format is A4 not Letter.
Thanx
Did your format work for action or thriller or just comedy?
Mike:
Where did you learn this distinction?
The shooting script doesn’t call out every shot either. When I write, I only call out shots when it’s clear that the reader would need to know that a shot is changing. For instance, if I wanted to point out the fact that while two people are talking, a mouse is watching them, I’ll write:
ANGLE – CORNER OF THE ROOM – a mouse is watching them.
The answer to your question is that the style of writing doesn’t change from first draft to shooting draft.
Lucas:
Hmm. Good question. I do not know how to format for A4.
Theoretically, though, this format works for any genre of film, be it action, thriller, comedy or drama.
Good news for Sophocles users — I’ve just loaded the new format, including changing to Courier New) and gained 1 (one) page. Not bad. I love Sophocles. (www.sophocles.net, if anybody’s interested.
I write everything in “Master Shot”. I will write “ANGLE-CORNER OF THE ROOM-a mouse is watching them” in a special case. I usually find a way to include such information in the action lines. I strive to be as visual as necessary and keep as much white on the page as possible. Am I doing something wrong?
I love the latest Sophocles–got it as a beta which let me play with the new outlining software AND allowed me to preview all three versions which will later only be available in three separate parts so that you can buy the one that suits your needs as writer, producer, director, etc. I’ve been using Soph for several years after getting rid of three comparatively cumbersome copies of Final Draft that were given to me by avid FD users. I think it beats all hands down…
CRAIG;
Re: “Mike: Where did you learn this distinction?”
Honestly? I’m beginning to suspect that I learned this distinction from perhaps a few people that were less than familiar with what should and what shouldn’t be in a script.
For example:
In a scene like the one you just cited. I wouldn’t normally include an extra slug in the scene for- ANGLE – CORNER OF THE ROOM – a mouse is watching them.
Instead, I’d have the slug that places the scene in a room at the beginning of the scene, but the bit with the mouse would be simply an action beat. As in…
–
INT. PROFESSOR POOF’S READING ROOM.
The walls are covered in leather bound editions of science classics, the chairs and tables are expensive Edwardian era antiques that speak of money and tradition, not that that can be seen very clearly, since every available square inch of horizontal space is blanketed in a thick messy layer of science journals.
POOF
It’s a common mistake to think of animal brains as being more “primitive”, or “less evolved”, than those of humans.
STUDENT
Well they are aren’t they?
A MOUSE watches from the corner of the room.
POOF
Not at all, no.
Poof lights a pipe, and settles into his “lecture mode”.
POOF (cont’d)
Most animal brains have been evolving every bit as long as human brains, they just haven’t seen the need to develop the same level of intelligence we have.
The mouse skitters over to a lamp chord and begins to crew on it.
POOF (cont’d)
In the absence of that need there’s no reason to suspect that “someday in the future”, given time, that animals will catch up to us by developing more “modern” and intelligent brains like our own.
A fzzzzzztPOP! is accompanied by a bright FLASH from the corner of the room and a loud SQUEAK!
Poof and his student jump to their feet.
Poof uses his cane to roll the sizzling carcass of the mouse away from the chewed lamp chord.
POOF (cont’d)
Ah! But as we can see here, the needs nature places on the level of intelligence any species possess are constantly changing, so who knows? Perhaps, in another ten thousand years, we will have mice that know better than to chew on lamp chords. But that wouldn’t be a case of them “catching up to us” so much as the appearance of a common need forcing a confluence of more similar abilities.
The student gags, and HOOTS!
POOF
Oh my.
Now what I’ve been told (and it could be very VERY wrong), is that in a draft script, describing what the mouse is doing as simply action beats would be perfectly acceptable, even preferred. But that at some point it the process, a scene like that would have to be broken up into individual shots, each with its own numbered slug, since the shots involving the mouse would require a trained mouse, a mouse “wrangler”, etc., and probably not only be filmed on different days, or even months apart from those shots involving “Professor Poof” and his student, but hundreds of miles apart by completely separate crews.
Thus the need for separate slugs for the “ON MOUSE” shots in the shooting script, and probably a few additional “RESUME ON POOF AND STUDENT” slugs as well.
In my own corner of the writing world, since I stick mainly to Sci-Fi, there are a whole host of other types of shots that, I’ve been told at least, are somewhat bad form to include in something like a spec draft. Things like…
INSERT VIEWSCREEN (OPTICAL)
General GUMNOSE, an alien with six hands, picks a live worm from his overly large and odd schnoz with one hand, while frantically waving a copy of the armistice with another.
GUMNOSE
Captain Walker this is absurd!
RESUME ON WALKER
As Captain Johnny Walker Red reacts with disgust.
GUMNOSE O.S. (cont’d)
These are not the terms we agreed to.
INSERT GUMNOSE’S POV. (OPTICAL)
A wider shot of Walker’s bridge on an alien viewscreen, as seen through the slightly DISTORTED VIEW of alien eyes. Walker’s entire bridge crew is trying to hide their disgust.
RESUME ON WALKER
Paying more attention to his shoes than the viewscreen.
WALKER
I understand your concerns general, but…
GUMNOSE O.S.
Excuses will not be tolerated or heard Captain!
An ALARM catches the attention of a CREWMAN.
INSERT CREWMAN’S CONSOLE
The alien ship is powering up its dreaded boogifier!
RESUME ON WALKER
CREWMAN
Captain, they’re powering weapons!
EXT. SPACE (OPTICAL)
The alien vessel fires on Walker’s ship.
Walker’s ship turns green and begins to break up into a myriad of snot globules.
In a scene like that, or so I’m told, you shouldn’t get into the specifics of the individual shots used to cover the scene, let alone go as far as noting which shots would be optical SFX shots. Instead you’d use just a single slug line to set the action as taking place “on the bridge” or wherever, then describe what happens primarily using action beats, and include individual shot choices only in cases where leaving them out would make what’s going on unclear.
A shooting script however, would include that extra level of detail (with slugs for each insert and/or sfx shot), because it has to (since many of those individual shots would probably have to be filmed at different times and in different ways), but a draft script wouldn’t, and shouldn’t include that level of detail (since the decisions effecting the choices of which, how many, and what kinds of shots are needed to cover a scene like that, would involve far more people than just the writer working on his or her own to produce a draft).
As a result, a draft script will quite often have considerably fewer pages than a shooting script, (in particular when you’re dealing with an sfx heavy story), and so not necessarily keep to the “page a minute” rule of thumb.
I just noticed, I mistook the camera direction ANGLE – CORNER OF THE ROOM, for a slug line. But still, if I had a situation where there’d be “mouse shots” and “Poof and student” shots in a scene, I wouldn’t normally split the shots off into different shots using slugs or camera directions. I’d just use action beats, and forego any camera directions or slugs with resumes to separate them, at least in a draft.
“As a result, a draft script will quite often have considerably fewer pages than a shooting script, (in particular when you’re dealing with an sfx heavy story), and so not necessarily keep to the “page a minute” rule of thumb.”
For the sake of clarity lets just say that a ‘script’ is something a writer delivers.
If scripts are formatted according to industry standard the page per minute rule applies. All scripts should be formatted according to standard: spec scripts, 2nd draft scripts, final drafts, whatever. This is basically what Craig is saying.
What you call a “shooting script” isn’t really a script. It’s not something a writer delivers.
dizzy: adj. having a whirling sensation in the head
I’ve just bought Sophocles but first demo’d Page 2Stage – liked it but before buying asked them where the scene numbers were. I thought I was being stupid not seeing them.
Back came the answer SCENE NUMBERS? WHY WOULD YOU NEED THOSE? NO ONE’S EVER ASKED FOR THEM BEFORE.
Does this mean that all their customers have never had a script filmed?