This is the classic screenplay format developed over decades of Hollywood history. It is used for productions filmed principally with one camera:
theatrical feature films
hour-long television drama
much half-hour television comedy (with the exception of traditional multi-camera sitcoms shot in the style of shows like Two and a Half Men)
long-form television, including made-for-television movies and miniseries
Despite their potential to map out film and television of soaring imagination, beauty and complexity, screenplays and teleplays consist of only four basic format elements: shot headings, direction, dialogue, and transitions.
Shot headings begin each new scene or shot. They may give general information about a scene’s location and the time of day the scene takes place:
INT. PENTAGON — FIFTH FLOOR CORRIDOR — DAY
Or they may give information about the type and subject of a specific shot:
EXTREME CLOSEUP — WANDA’S TRIGGER FINGER
Shot headings are most often followed by direction, passages that describe what is being seen and heard within the shot or scene:
Micah crawls under the fence, the barbed wire snagging his tattered jumpsuit. The beam of a searchlight passes and he presses himself into the ground, desperate to make himself invisible.
Dialogue consists of the name of the character who is speaking, the actual words that are spoken, and any parenthetical character direction related to the dialogue:
MIMI
That just figures, don’t it?
(smacks steering
wheel)
I go and steal me a car without
no gas.
Transitions sometimes appear at the end of scenes and indicate how one scene links to the next:
DISSOLVE TO:
See Appendix A for sample script pages in single-camera film format.
Standard format dictates that scripts always use a fixed-pitch font, such as Courier or Courier New, and adhere to standard margins. A fixed-pitch font (as opposed to a proportionally spaced font like the one used in this paragraph) is one in which every letter occupies the same amount of horizontal space on the line, regardless of whether it is a lower case i or a capital M. Fonts used for typing scripts are 10 pitch, meaning there are 10 characters per horizontal inch, and 12 points, which allows six lines of type per vertical inch. Twelve-point Courier or Courier New fit the bill and are the fonts most often used in scripts. Used in combination with a fixed-pitch font, standard margins result in script pages with a relatively uniform amount of content per page.
Why is this important?
Over the years, a rule of thumb developed among filmmakers that one script page translated, on average, into one minute of finished film. Production cost estimates also came to be based in part on the number of pages in a script or scene. So did the amount of time allotted for filming scenes. Television writers knew that if they wrote roughly 60 pages, they had the right amount of material for a one-hour show. Feature writers knew that a 120-page screenplay represented a film of about two hours. And despite any number of quibbles one may have with these formulas (scripts for the brooding one-hour series China Beach often ran as few as 50 pages while scripts for the hyperkinetic ER, also an hour long, sometimes stretched up to 70 pages), they are indelibly part of the day-in and day-out workings of Hollywood even today. Production schedules are set based on the number of pages to be shot per day. Writers make decisions about whether or not to cut a scene based on their script’s page count. An accurate page count is taken so seriously in Hollywood that senior executives at Warner Bros, once threatened to disband their own script processing department when they suspected its staff had compromised standard script margins on one critical draft of a feature film script. Altering a script’s font or margins or even paper size from the standard changes the amount of material that fits on a page and thereby upsets all the calculations based on script page counts. It also changes the appearance of the page in ways that can instantly brand a script as unprofessional. Writers do so at their own peril.
A script page typed with standard margins looks like this:
Standard single-camera film format margins are as follows:
Paper is 3-hole punched 8.5″ x 11″ white 20 lb. bond.
Shot headings:
Left margin is 1.7″
Right margin is 1.1″
Line length is 57 characters
Direction:
Left margin is 1.7″
Right margin is 1.1″
Line length is 57 characters
Left margin is 2.7″
Right margin is 2.4″
Line length is 34 characters
Character name over dialogue:
Left margin is 4.1″
Note that the character name over dialogue is not centered. It begins at the same fixed point (4.1″ from the left edge of the page) no matter how long it is.
Parenthetical character direction:
Left margin is 3.4″
Right margin is 3.1″
Line length is 19 characters
Scene transitions:
Left margin is 6.0″
Scene numbers:
Left scene number goes 1.0″ from the left edge of the page
Right scene number goes 7.4″ from the left edge of the page
Note that scene numbers should not be added by the writer. Scene numbers are added by the production office when a script goes into active preproduction.
Page numbers:
Go at 7.2″, .5″ below the top edge of the page.
Font:
Courier or Courier New 12 point (or equivalent fixed-pitch serif font)
Page length:
A maximum of 57 lines (which allows for .5″ margin at the top and 1″ margin at the bottom of each page)
These 57 lines include one line at the top of each page for the page number, followed by a blank line and the text of the script.
See page 28 for a sample with standard single-camera film margins. Use it as a template against which to compare the margins of your own pages.
In an effort to save paper, some studios have experimented with double-sided script printing and some literary agencies routinely copy scripts on both sides of the page. Nevertheless, the longstanding practice in Hollywood has been to print scripts only on one side of the page. This makes reading the script far easier and provides room for the abundant notes that are regularly written on script pages. In addition, once a project approaches production, single-sided printing is an absolute necessity to make possible the replacement of individual script pages with colored revision pages.
BOBBIE
There are some details missing
from his statement to the other
detectives. We need him to fill
in the blanks.
FATHER PETROCELLI
(studies the cops)
You understand the bullet passed
through his brain. Father Gage
is not the man he was.
INT. UPSTAIRS HALLWAY
Father Petrocelli leads Bobbie and Will down a dim passage. At the far end he knocks softly on a door, then turns the knob and pushes it open.
FATHER PETROCELLI
If you need me, I’ll be close by.
INT. FATHER GAGE’S QUARTERS
A bed. A desk. A lamp. Nothing more. Father Gage bends over the desk, his head wrapped in gauze, a pencil in his hand, scratching out a manuscript. He finishes the page and places it atop a stack on the floor. There are other stacks. He has written hundreds of pages. He starts another.
WILL
Father, we’re sorry to bother
you. We’re detectives from San
Francisco PD. We need to ask you
a few questions.
Gage doesn’t look up.
WILL
What are you writing?
FATHER GAGE
A book.
WILL
What about?
Gage throws down the pencil, pushes back from the desk and rises to his full, towering height.
FATHER GAGE
Are you a believer?