Screenplay Format | Film Production

1. Screenplay Format Most modern screenplays, at least in Hollywood and related screen cultures, are written in a style known as the Master Scene Format OR Master Scene Script. The format is characterized by six elements, presented in the order in which they are most likely to be used in a script:
2.   1 . Scene Heading, or Slug  2 . Action Lines, or Big pint  3 . Character Name  4 . Parentheticals  5 . Dialogue  6 . Transitions
3. Screenplay Format – Scene Headings 
4. Scripts written in Master Scene Format are divided into scenes: "a unit of story that takes place at a specific location and time". Scene headings (or slugs) indicate the location the following scene is to take place in, whether it is interior or exterior, and the time-of-day it appears to be. Conventionally, they are capitalized, and may be underlined and/or bolded. In production drafts, scene headings are numbered.
5. Screenplay Format – Action Lines 
6. Next are action lines, which describe stage direction and are generally written in the present tense with a focus only on what can be seen and/or heard by the audience.
7. Screenplay Format – Character Names 
8. Character names are in all caps, centered in the middle of the page, and indicate that a character is speaking the following dialogue. Characters who are speaking off-screen or in voice-over are indicated by the suffix (O.S.) and (V.O) respectively.
9. Screenplay Format – Parentheticals 
10. Parentheticals provide stage direction for the dialogue that follows. Most often this is to indicate how dialogue should be performed (for example, angry) but can also include small stage directions (for example, picking up vase). Overuse of parentheticals is discouraged.
11. Screenplay Format – Dialogue 
12. Dialogue blocks are offset from the page's margin by 3.7" and are left- justified. Dialogue spoken by two characters at the same time is written side- by-side and is conventionally known as dual-dialogue.
13. Screenplay Format – Transitions 
14. The final element is the scene transition and is used to indicate how the current scene should transition into the next. It is generally assumed that the transition will be a cut, and using "CUT TO:" will be redundant. Thus the element should be used sparingly to indicate a different kind of transition such as "DISSOLVE TO:".
15. Presentation slides (ppt)
16. Video lecture