Hey, guys ... I'm just throwing in my two cents here. I don't work in film, so I am not speaking as a working authority. None of this is meant to be dogmatic or challenging or argumentative.
I hate CONTINUOUS. It is only helpful (theoretically) to a reader; it has nothing to do with making a film. And a reader should be able to deduce that the action is continuous (if the continuity is important) without having the author tell him. If the reader cannot make the deduction, then the viewer certainly cannot.
The same goes for LATER, which I see a lot, too, along with silly variants like MINUTES LATER and A FEW HOURS LATER.
I also dislike the frequently used technique in the example that icerose cited. Again, nothing is meant to be provocative or challenging here. I will explain.
A lot of people use this technique, and it works. They like to emphasize BATHROOM as a new image, a new scene.
So why don't I like it?
First, I just don't like the style, but that is just personal. The more important consideration is that this has to be re-written by somebody before shooting can be scheduled and otherwise planned. The BATHROOM is a different scene. It will be shot separately from the scene in the RECEPTION OFFICE.
I would do it this way:
Code:
INT. RECEPTION OFFICE
Molly types at her desk. Suddenly she clutches her stomach.
She stands up, doubled over, and dashes across the office to
the bathroom.
INT. BATHROOM
The fluorescent light flickers on as Molly bolts for the toilet.
I am sure that the continuity is obvious to the reader and to the viewer. No need for CONTINUOUS. And the BATHROOM is now a separate scene; it is not just a shot within a location.
As I said, just my two cents.
Okay, here is the answer in purely technical terms.
As far as the production side is concerned there is one and only one right way.
And that is a complete slug line for every single new location.
So somebody walks from the bathroom to the living room to the bathroom and that day comes when someone has actually bought the script and they've greenlit the project and it's become that mythic object that people talk about so often -- a "Shooting Script" -- one of the few changes that will actually be made is that all of those partial sluglines and one word location changes will actually be conformed and become real honest-to-God slug lines.
Not only that, they will ask you to go through the script and change those three or four different ways that you describe the same place (like Bob's bathroom, a bathroom, the bathroom, Bob and Ann's bathroom) so that if, in fact it is just one place, it's always described as exactly the same one place in every single slug line.
So even if you write it like this:
INT. BOB'S LIVING ROOM - NIGHT
THE BATHROOM - CONTINUOUS
BACK TO THE LIVING ROOM
BACK TO THE BATHROOM
When the time comes to actually make the thing, it's going to be like this:
INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT 18
INT. BATHROOM - NIGHT 19
INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT 20
INT. BATHROOM - NIGHT 21
There's a reason for that. It's because a shooting script is a scheduling document and they don't want to schedule one day for Bob's bathroom and another day the "the bathroom" only to find out that they're actually the same bathroom.
Also, even if somebody is walking continuously, in the course of a scene, from living room to bathroom and back again, unless the director has gotten very creative and intends to do it in a single shot, they're going to break the thing up into separate "scenes" -- and they'll shoot all the stuff in the bathroom together and all the stuff in the living room together.
And maybe some of the stuff in the bathroom is shot at night and maybe some of the stuff is shot during the day and maybe some of the stuff shot in the bathroom is shot at night that's continuous to scene 19 and maybe it's shot at night and it's shot after scene 58, when everybody is twenty years older.
That's why all the scenes get numbers, so that production knows where they go in the continuity of the script.
That's why it has to be done that way *in the shooting script."
That being said, when you're reading a script that isn't a shooting script, that hasn't already been bought and which isn't primarily a production document, your goal is a different one.
Your goal is to sell the script. And then you don't want to have a situation where a reader needs to "figure out" things.
Now, I don't mean, if you intend for something to be ambiguous, like the identity of that guy lurking in the shadows, well then -- that's fine. It's okay for the reader not to know who it is that's lurking in the shadows.
But if you've got a scene where someone is doing something in one room and you cut to another room in the same house and somebody is doing something else and it's happening at the same time -- when you watch the movie there are countless ways that you can make that fact of simultaneity instantly clear (maybe the music that's playing downstairs is audible upstairs, or whatever). In the same way, if you want to make it clear that you've cut to a scene and it's much later at night, it's easy enough to make that clear as well -- instantly clear.
But when you are writing it and all of those visual and audible clues that you can rely on to make that sort of thing instantly obvious to a viewer are simply not available to you without cluttering up your script with way too much incidental detail.
And the last thing you want is for a reader, when they're moving from one scene to another, to get confused as to time and place. Are we still at the party -- is this thing with so-and-so upstairs happening while the party is going on, or is this now happening way later?
You don't want that kind of confusion. And if a certain kind of shorthand helps make that sort of thing clearer -- for the purposes of the reader -- then I'm all for it.
That's what these "mini-sluglines" are all about. You establish a single location in a single time and place. Say, for instance, you've got a major scene happening in a house. But within that major scene, occurring in that one place at that one time, you move around to different places in the house, focusing on different incidents that are happening within that larger scene -- over in THE KITCHEN, these people are talking, over in THE LIVING ROOM, these people are talking, WITH JOANNE AND BILL -- they're doing something. And it allows you to break the larger scene up into more manageable and comprehensible pieces, while still making it clear that we're still in the same place at the same time -- and we, the readers, will know when we've left that larger encompassing location when we get to the next full slug line.
NMS
