In a screenplay, you have the characters' dialogue centered in the middle of the page. Almost everything else (action, description, scene headings) is on the left margin. Scene headings tell us when a new scene starts & gives the location and time.
Example: INT. BOB'S KITCHEN MORNING
The INT. stands for interior and tells you that the scene is inside a house or a building (as opposed to EXT. which stands for exterior and tells you the scene is outside). BOB'S KITCHEN tells you where we are and MORNING tells us what time of the day we are in Bob's kitchen.
If you see INT./EXT. (or I./E.) it means part of the scene is interior & part is exterior. An example would be a scene in a car. Sometimes the camera will be outside of the car (Exterior) and sometimes inside the car (Interior).
In a movie, all you have in order to convey the story is what the audience sees and hears (unlike a book where you can convey what a character is thinking). So if there is a sound that needs to be heard in order to follow the story (eg: the PHONE RINGS or the GUN GOES OFF), it is standard procedure to capitalize the exact sound that the screenwriter wants to convey to the audience.
Instead of reading all the terms below, my suggestion is now to start reading one of my screenplays and when you come to a term or an abbreviation you don't know what it means, scroll down to the Table of Contents below. Click on the term or abbreviation you’re not sure of, and it will take you right to it.
Finally, I apologize if some of this seems pretty obvious. I just figure better to explain it instead of assuming you understand something.
P. 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Close on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .P. 4
Continued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .P. 4
Continuous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 4
Cut to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 5
Ext. Wayne’s house Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 5
Fade In/Fade Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 6
Filtered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 6
Flashback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 6
Insert: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P.6
INT./EXT. (or I./E.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 7
Montage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 7
O.S. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 7
P.O.V. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .P. 8
P. 4
CLOSE ON:
Also called CLOSE UP ON sometimes. Self-explanatory, I think. It's when a character's face takes up the whole screen.
CONTINUED
At the end of the scene heading, instead of telling us the time of day, sometimes you’ll see CONTINUED. This means a scene has been established, we cut to another scene somewhere, and then come back to the first scene that was already established. This is used a lot during flashbacks. For example, a scene heading might be:
INT. WAYNE’S KITCHEN MORNING
Wayne asks Joel what happened to his car. Then we cut to a different scene:
EXT. TEXAS FREEWAY FLASHBACK
We see Joel pulled over to the side of the road, trying to start his car which is out of gas. Then we go back to the scene in Wayne’s kitchen and the scene heading will be:
INT. WAYNE’S KITCHEN CONTINUED
CONTINUOUS
At the end of a scene heading, if you see CONTINUOUS, it just means the scene is continuing but the characters have moved to a different location. For example, the scene is taking place in Wayne’s kitchen between Wayne and Joel. So the scene heading would be:
INT. WAYNE’S KITCHEN MORNING
But during the middle of the conversation, Joel gets up and goes into the living room. Wayne gets up and follows him, all the time their conversation continuing. But once they’re in the living room, the new scene heading would be:
INT. WAYNE’S LIVING ROOM CONTINUOUS
And the scene continues.
P. 5
CUT TO
They used to write these before every scene heading (the “EXT GUS’ HOUSE” stuff). I use the “CUT TO” every now and then, mainly when I cut to a different scene for only a few seconds or before a montage (see below).
EXT. WAYNE’S HOUSE NIGHT
These are scene headings. This is to show you when a new scene starts. EXT. stands for “exterior” & means the scene is set outside. INT. stands for “interior” & means the scene is set in a house or building or car. Most car scenes have EXT./INT. (or I./E.) which basically means you first see the outside of the car & then it cuts to a scene inside the car. Next is the location of the scene (the WAYNE’S HOUSE part above). The last part tells you what time of the day or night it is. Sometimes you’ll see something like:
BATHROOM
Or
LATER
This means it’s the same location, same scene, just in another part (or later) in the house or wherever the scene started.
P. 6
FADE IN/FADE OUT
Self-explanatory, I think. FADE IN is when there’s nothing on the screen & the scene gradually “fades in” to view. FADE OUT is the opposite: the scene gradually “fades out” to nothing (usually black)
FILTERED
When a character says something & their voice is filtered for some reason. For example, what somebody sounds like when you’re listening to them on the phone, or the way somebody sounds on the radio. You write “filtered” to indicate that’s how their voice should sound.
FLASHBACK
When a character is remembering back to something that happened in the past or when the audience is taken back to the past.
INSERT:
A close-up of a particular object. An example would be Bob picks up a note his wife left him. So the scene might be:
INT. BOB'S KITCHEN - EVENING
Bob comes inside and sets his briefcase down. He sees a note on the counter and goes and picks it up.
INSERT...
...of the note, which says:
Honey,
went to the store to get eggs.
Back in a little while,
Cheryl
The scene might continue with:
Bob throws the note away and takes his briefcase upstairs.
This will let us know that we are know longer watching an insert shot of the object.
P. 7
INT./EXT. (or I./E.)
It means part of the scene is inside (Interior) and part of the scene is outside (Exterior). An example would be a scene in a car. Sometimes the camera will be outside of the car (Exterior) and sometimes inside the car (Interior).
MONTAGE
Something that’s probably in every movie. When you have to show a lot of things happening in a very short time (30 seconds, for example) there will be a montage of shots to move the story along. An example would be in “It’s a Wonderful Life”—Jimmy Stewart’s father has died and Jimmy wants to leave town but can’t because Potter will take over his father’s savings & loan business. So he stays and then WWII starts. We then see how his family & friends contributed to the war effort (his brother becoming a hero overseas, Burt the Cop getting a Purple Heart in Africa, Jimmy’s mother helping with the U.S.O., Potter working for the draft board, Jimmy as Air Raid Warden, etc.). So the story is moved along four years (the duration of WWII) but only took about 30 seconds of screen time to do it. That’s a montage.
O.S.
Stands for Off Screen. It’s when a character who is not on camera but is in the scene says something. For example: Two guys are sitting in the living room watching TV. One of them says: “I’m gonna go get a beer.” He gets up & walks to the kitchen while the camera stays on the guy still sitting in the living room. Then we hear the guy in the kitchen (even though we don’t see him) say: “You want one?” He’s still in the scene but while he’s getting the beer, he’s “off screen.”
In the screenplay, it would look like this:
GUS (O.S.)
You want one?
P. 8
P.O.V.
Stands for Point Of View. That’s very common in movies and means we’re looking at the point of view of a specific character. For example: say a car is driving off a cliff. The driver’s P.O.V. would have the camera in the car showing what the driver sees as he drives off the cliff.
REVERSE ANGLE
Think of it like when you switch your smartphone camera from front-facing to rear-facing. The camera is on Bob as he looks at something behind the camera that we can't see. A REVERSE ANGLE would then have the camera turn around 180 degrees to show what Bob's looking at. In a script it might look like this:
CLOSE UP on Bob, as he tries to speak. He can't though, because he is terrified.
REVERSE ANGLE as we finally see what Bob is terrified of. It's a girl scout selling cookies. And then we remember: Bob had a terrible allergic reaction to Shortbreads that put him in the ICU for two weeks.
P. 9
SUPERIMPOSE:
Writing that’s on the screen, like “One Year Earlier”, or “Cincinnati, Ohio. 1996.” It’s often shown at the beginning of a movie.
VOICE OVER
Also could be indicated with just: V.O. It is used to show what a character in the scene is thinking. Eg: We hear the character in the scene say something but his lips don’t move. It is also used as the voice of the narrator in some movies. Good examples include Ray Liotta's narration in Goodfellas, Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption, Edward Norton in Fight Club, William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, Sam Elliott in the Big Lebowski.
Again, I hope I didn't state the obvious too much. I erred on the side of being clear just in case. Thanks for reading my screenplay!