Or more accurately, they have to decide whether or not that particular scene is a DAY scene or a NIGHT scene.
When scheduling your script for production, an AD or UPM has to decide, for each and every scene, what time of day the production will be shooting that particular scene. Try to write only NIGHT and DAY for times in the slugline In brief: if you can think like an AD or a UPM who’s lining your pages into eighths, you’ll likely write more clear, more efficient, more visual scenes, and with far less fluff. If you’ve written an entire 5-line paragraph to describe Larry getting out of his car and walking to his trunk, your AD or UPM is going to have a bit more trouble deciphering, without directorial help, what exactly the action is and how many “eighths” that action boils down to. “What do eighths of pages have to do with what I write?” Overall, UPMs and ADs like clear, brief, efficient action/description text because that’s the kind of text that typically adheres most cleanly and accurately to the eighths metric. In which case the scene which is a mere 1/8 of a page on paper could end up being a half-day shoot, or even longer.)
A scene like Larry getting out of his car and walking to the trunk might be a single easy setup, or the director could want 50 feet of track set up and a series of speed ramping shots to cover the action. (Keep in mind that the UPM and AD will usually sit down with the director and go over each line of the script before they line it, in order to sync up with what the director has planned visually. …would most likely be a mere 1/8 page scene. Larry gets out of the car, walks to the trunk. So if scene 1 is a scene that starts on page one, and ends on the middle of page 3, assuming the AD hasn’t broken it down into various other subscenes or shots, would be referred to a 2 and 1/2 page scene. When they line the script, and create and arbitrarily number these scenes and subscenes and shots, they assign a page count to them.Īnd that page count’s basis of numbering is anywhere between 1/8 of a page and 1 page. So, sure, the first scene in your script might be scene 1, but the UPM or AD might break it down into 1A, 1B, 1C, etc., and then schedule the order of when those scenes are shot in completely non-sequential way which makes more financial sense, or is more efficient. Most of the time, those demarcations, those lines, they end up being exactly above the scene heading you wrote, and right after.īut often, the UPM or AD will draw those lines much more narrowly within your scene, breaking what you considered to be a single scene into a series of subscenes or shots or setups. The UPM or AD takes a ruler and marker to your script and draws horizontal lines across the page to demarcate where she interprets your scenes begin and end. Lining a script is the process of sorting your script’s scenes into actual, manageable blocks. Whenever a UPM or a 1st AD is handed your screenplay, the first thing they do is to “line it” and to “break it down.” As a writer, think in screenplay pages and eighths of pages The lighters-on-fire of all who oppose them and their mission to get the film in the can, on time, and on budget.īut they’re also the ones you might want to think about the most when sitting down to do one last pass of your script before turning it in or submitting it anywhere.Īnd here’s how you can improve your script, in a few tangible and intangible ways, via the simple act of trying to please those people. Yes, they’re the notorious “hardasses” on every film. The empathy of a line producer and/or a 1st Assistant Director. No, I’m talking about the only empathy that matters on nearly all smaller films, and many big-budget ones: No, those are all flavors of empathy, and skills unto themselves, which you can achieve via many various paths available in screenwriting books, courses, and cheeseball seminar videos with self-appointed script gurus. It begins with the development of empathy.īut not empathy with your story, nor with your characters, nor with your audience. If you’re not born with the ability, you can learn it. Yet it’s vital to your success as an artist, as a writer – as a screenwriter – that you have that very ability. So it’s not always easy, and doesn’t always feel good, to zoom way the hell back out of your own head and story and peer upon your masterpiece in its true, horrific, Cthuluesque form, which is, quite simply: We’re supposed to inhabit the shoes of every last character in our screenplay, reach down into the subconscious, and yank out an exploding, fizzy, nuclear bouquet of emotion and revelation that moves, shakes, or destroys an audience to their core. We’re supposed go into our own heads, deep.