Only My Scriptwriting

Only Research Today

Only Research Today

No, I’m not writing about converting my pencil handwriting to a Word document. I’ve given up on trying to do that. I know that I can’t do it. The only way to transfer my pencil handwriting is to do it the somewhat old-fashioned way. And that is to scan it into my laptop first.

After I can it into my laptop, I can transcribe it by reading the scanned copies on the top half of my screen and typing it into the Word document on the bottom half of my screen. It’s not the best way to do it, but it’s the fastest way for me to do it.

What the title of this blog entry implies is that I’m still fighting my cold and hopefully not a possible flu. I don’t think that I have the flu yet. After all, I don’t have a fever, I don’t feel hot, I don’t have the shivers, or a runny nose, etc. aka the flu.

So, what does the blog title mean? It means that I read a lot of television scripts and some movie scripts as well. They say you should read scripts to understand how they are written, and I believe in that theory. It’s how I learned to write a script. That’s what I did today.

I was looking for specifics in writing my scripts. And I found out that most of the scripts I read didn’t succumb to the Industry Standards. Mostly, what I’m referring to are television scripts. But in some cases, it refers to movies’ aka feature films too.

What I have learned is that each Act starts a new page, and it includes a FADE IN at the beginning of the Act and a FADE OUT at the end of it. Most that I read didn’t have a FADE OUT at the end. Some didn’t have a FADE IN either. But most of them did start with a FADE IN.

When it comes to Production scripts, I can understand they may not need them because they are the Shooting Scripts. So, they might not have these elements. I think that they should. But it’s up to the Producers and Directors whether or not to use Industry Standards.

Another thing I noticed was that there was a lot of ‘wes’ and ‘uses’ used in these scripts. Once again, with Production Scripts that may be okay. But what I have been reading, they aren’t supposed to be used in drafts. I may be wrong about that. But I don’t think that I am.

I only use ‘wes’ and ‘uses’ in my Establishing Shots. That’s because they aren’t a part of the story. They are Establishing Shots. Mostly, they introduce the scene or an Act. I’m not sure if what I’m doing is right or not. I think that I am. But I could be wrong about that too.

What I have been writing about has been about television scripts. The only difference is that movies aka feature films don’t have Acts. And they only have one FADE IN at the beginning of the movie and one FADE OUT at the end of it. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be.