Screenplay Format
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The document provides an overview of screenplay formatting including defining scenes, scene headings, scene directions, character cues, actor directions, dialogue, exposition, and backstory. It discusses how to effectively incorporate exposition and backstory into a screenplay while continuing to move the story forward through visual storytelling. Key elements like dialogue, character actions, and location are emphasized.
Screenplay Format
- 1. Screenwriting Format By Sajid R. Peña
- 2. WHAT IS A SCREENPLAY? The script of a movie, including acting instructions and scene directions.
- 3. REMEMBER: Film is a VISUAL medium. You don't tell your audience your story, you SHOW them. You must learn to write a screenplay VISUALLY. Write what they will SEE and what they will HEAR. It MUST be written in present tense.
- 4. You might love your characters and know what they are thinking, but the discipline of screenplay writing is how to show it on a screen. When it happens, it may be just done with a look, often improvised on the movie set. So just write the pictures, sounds, and speeches, and leave the rest for the filmmakers.
- 6. SCENE Screenplays are divided into scenes. A scene can be defined as a unit of dramatic action which takes place in a specific location in continuous time.
- 7. SCENE HEADING (Also called SLUG LINE) EXT. MARTHA’S HOUSE. NIGHT: This tells us whether the scene is inside or outside, where it is and whether it’s day or night. INT. JACK’S CAR. HIGH STREET. DAY: If more information about the location is needed it can go from the general to the specific or vice versa,
- 8. SCENE DIRECTION (Also called Action) Always written in the present tense, this contains descriptions of the characters’ actions and events relevant to the story. Characters’ names are usually capitalised. JACK notices MARTHA standing at the side of the road. He slams the brakes on and the car screeches to a halt.
- 9. CHARACTER CUE The name of the character who speaks. Always capitalised and centred above their speech. MANG LITO Ben, check mo nga yung rooftop, parang may napansin akong bata. Ben, oy...Ben...
- 10. Actor Direction (Also called Parenthetical) In brackets under the character’s name, used to describe the way, or to whom, they speak. SOPHIE (pa-sarkastiko) Trish, ang ganda naman ng bag mo. Mukhang original, from Divisoria ba yan?
- 11. DIALOGUE What the characters say. It moves the story forward. It is subtle and clever. It is witty or comic.
- 12. It moves the story forward. “always move the story forward, always move the story forward.” *EXPOSITION AND *BACKSTORY How I could move the story forward and at the same time deliver backstory?
- 13. *Move The Story Forward The gist of the always-move-the-story-forward adage is that the writer can never waste the audience’s time with pointless or irrelevant scenes or beats. In this sense, it’s totally possible to move the story forward while delivering backstory as long as the backstory is relevant to the scene or character.
- 14. Purpose of Exposition Teach the audience about a character and his or her world: is the story world quaint and peaceful or scary and violent? Did all the relatives of the main characters die of old age or were they shot during a bank hold-up? Think Batman. How did Bruce’s parents die?
- 15. Purpose of Exposition Allow the audience to connect with a character by learning more about his or her traumas and pains: dissatisfaction is something that everyone feels sooner or later. Whether we are unhappy with our careers, love life, level of education, what have you, everyone is unhappy with an aspect of their lives. Remember Luke Skywalker in the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)? The adventurer in Luke has his hands tied due to his obligations in the farm, although he really wants to travel and explore. Many of us have been in Luke’s shoes at some point in our lives. So here we are watching this sci-fi about intergalactic wars, and we understand exactly what the main character is feeling. That’s a connection.
- 16. Purpose of Exposition Inform the audience of a specific fear or skill a character possess: this is a kind of foreshadowing that reveals a trait that will be relevant as the story unfolds: Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes, Romeo and Juliet discuss death, Ripley can operate a powerloader, etc
- 17. *Exposition Through Dialogue *Exposition Through Mise En Scene *Exposition Through Text *Exposition Through Narration *Exposition Through Flashback *Exposition Through Music
- 18. THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION RED: “The first night’s the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half blind from that delousing shit they throw on you, and when they put you in that cell… and those bars slam home… that’s when you know it’s for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it.” THE PIANO ADA: “The voice you hear is not my speaking voice – but my mind’s voice. I have not spoken since I was six years old. No one knows why. Not even me.”
- 19. *Exposition Through Dialogue *Exposition Through Mise En Scene *Exposition Through Text *Exposition Through Narration *Exposition Through Flashback *Exposition Through Music
- 20. It is subtle and clever. In The Exorcist (1973), right before the exorcism is performed, the mother of the possessed girl, tries to relax Father Merrin by giving him tea. Then she asks, “Would you like some bourbon in that, father?” Father Merrin sighs and answers, “Well, my doctor says I shouldn’t.” He pauses and continues, “But thank God my will is weak.” Notice that the first part of Father Merrin’s reply is really a “no,” but the second part is interpreted as a “yes.” The dialogue is clever and unique because it reveals two things about Father Merrin: (1) he is weak, and (2) he’s afraid of the exorcism he’s about to conduct.
- 21. It is witty or comic. In a scene from Thelma & Louise (1991), Thelma (Geena Davis) delights on how cute JD’s butt is and then she contrasts it with her husband’s: “Daryl doesn’t have a cute butt like that. You could park a car in the shadow of his ass.” This dialogue is funny, but more importantly it sheds light on Thelma’s character and the animosity towards her husband. Furthermore, her remark also establishes that she’s attracted to JD, which foreshadows the affair they experience later in the movie.
- 22. 17 INT. BRENNAN HOUSE – FOYER JOHN (tries to push past) She didn't do anything! DETECTIVE QUINN I will only – JOHN (tries again) She didn't do anything! DETECTIVE QUINN Put him in cuffs. The uniform pushes him up against the wall and cuffs his wrists. John watches as his child cries, his wife is led out in handcuffs and the house is torn apart. Cut to BLACK.
- 23. 18 INT. BRENNAN HOUSE -- NIGHT LUKE (O.S.) Daddy!... DADDY!! A light comes on. John steps out of his bedroom and enters his son's room. JOHN (O.S.) It's okay. Just a bad dream. He comes back out carrying Luke, now SIX YEARS-OLD. 19 EXT. PITTSBURGH -- DAY 20 The "T," the city's fast-moving trolley, rises up from underground and we CRANE UP to see the city. JOHN (O.S.) But Sam's your friend, right?
- 24. 21 EXT. ALLEGHENY COUNTY JAIL -- DAY 21 Tilt down from a passing T-Train to find John and Luke, walking toward the huge, modern Allegheny County Jail. LUKE Not at lunch. JOHN Does he take your food? LUKE No. JOHN Did he say something mean? (Luke nods) About Mommy?
- 25. LUKE Yeah. JOHN Did you hit him? LUKE Yeah. JOHN Good. Where did you hit him? LUKE Near the swings. JOHN Wow. I bet that hurt. LUKE Yeah.
- 26. Read the following short story A girl and her father were driving along a country road on their way home when they saw a young girl hitchhiking. They stopped and picked her up and she got in the back seat. She told the girl and her father that she lived in a house about five miles up the road. She didn’t say anything after that but just turned to watch out the window. When the father saw the house he drove up to it and turned around to tell the girl they had arrived – but she wasn’t there. Both he and his daughter were really mystified and decided to knock on the door and tell the people what had happened. They told him they had once had a daughter who answered the description of the girl they supposedly had picked up, but she had disappeared some years ago and had last been seen hitchhiking on this very road. Today would have been her birthday.
- 27. Construct a short screenplay based on the story making sure you use standard screenplay format. This should include: ● More than one scene ● Screen directions ● Dialogue
- 28. NEED HELP? IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR WANT A PROFESSIONAL HELP WITH YOUR SCRIPT. PLEASE EMAIL ME AT shadowshooter@outlook.com
Editor's Notes
- #13: I remember when I started writing screenplays in college, Exposition and Backstory were two concepts that used to really baffle me. In my mind, forward and backstory were two contradictory notions: how can you go forward and backward at the same time? EXPOSITION --- comprehensive explanation
- #14: I thought (erroneously) that forward meant future-centric, that I should focus only on what was gonna happen in the next minute, or the next day, or the next week in the lives of the characters. I thought that talking about the character’s past was taboo. But that’s not true. Revealing the character’s past is an essential part of screenwriting. This makes the audience connect to characters in ways that wouldn’t be otherwise possible.
- #15: Where did SUPERMAN came from?
- #16: THE NEXT THREE DAYS – Russell Crowe likes to kiss his wife when he’s visiting her in jail after she’s been there for sometime, but not possible because of the prison rule? And we can see his longing to hug her, and we feel sorry for him. So we kind of got connected with him in that point, and we wanted that kiss or hug to happen.
- #17: FORESHADOWING – James Bond’s films.. Introducing of gadgets in the FIRST ACT and use them in the LAST ACT.
- #18: EXPOSITION THROUGH DIALOGUE –Example, a character is explaining to another character why he committed suicide – because of a ruined academic career, a break up with the man of his dreams, that also reveals his sexual preference. EXPOSITION THROUGH TEXT – Three days later, etc. Ex. STARWARS first frames.
- #19: DELOUSE – treat a person to rid them of lice and other parasitic insects.
- #20: Another possibility for flashback is when a character thinks something so intimate that he or she doesn’t talk about it. In The Silence of the Lambs (1991), a couple of flashbacks show Clarice’s (Jodie Foster) memories with her dad.
- #21: Films are an artistic and creative expression. The last thing the audience wants is a trite or boring dialogue
- #22: Watch the film called 12 ANGRY MEN, as the best example for film’s with great exposition