Scriptwriting

Scriptwriting, production of a script upon which a film or television programme will be based. This article deals only with film scripts.

The film script is the written description of what is to be shown in the film when it is made. It is used as the major guide and reference for the production of a film, and can exist in a variety of forms at different stages in the production. From at least as early as 1905, some films had scripts written for them before they were produced, and this became increasingly necessary during the Nickelodeon period as production became more highly organized. Often the director of the film wrote the script in whatever form he chose, but during the period of the one-reel film scripts written by specialized writers came to be used by most of the major production companies of the time. In their early form, such scripts described the setting and action for each scene, and also indicated the content of the inter-titles between shots, both those that described the dramatic situation and, eventually, those that gave the words spoken by the characters. As filmic construction became more elaborate during World War I, some film scripts even began to give precise descriptions for the individual shots that made up a scene.

The standard method for the preparation of a film script since the consolidation of the studio system in the 1920s is first to write a treatment or story outline. This can be an original story or taken from an existing novel or play. A brief description of the major events that happen in the film, without any dialogue, and emphasizing the attractiveness of various features of the project from a commercial point of view, it covers one or two pages. Then follows the master scene script. This is broken down into a series of successively numbered scenes, with a new scene for every time the action changes location. In the script, each scene starts with a brief indication of the place and time of day, and continues with a description of the action in the scene as it happens, interleaved with the dialogue spoken by each character. Although this is roughly similar to the way a stage play is written down by its author, the layout on the page is different, with the names of the speakers centred, as are the blocks of text that they speak, which appear below the names of each character.

The master scene script usually goes through a series of altered versions, very frequently with contributions from one or more writers other than the originator of the story. These revisions are intended to bring the script closer to the ideal dramatic form for commercial feature films. After the final version of the master scene script has been agreed by the producer and the director of the film, a shooting script or shot list is made, which includes the same information, but further indicates the shots into which each scene will be broken up when the film is actually shot. This stage, which is not always used, is particularly important for the scheduling of the shooting of modern big-budget films.

Finally, after the film has been shot and edited, a post-production script or cutting continuity is prepared describing the shots in the film as it finally exists in its finished form. See also Cinema, Early Development of.