Absolutely not. Shooting scripts are what the director, DP, and art director cobble together during the breakdown so everyone knows what's going on.
No one who seriously wants to be looked at submits a shooting script. It's presumptuous, and a waste of time for the reader. Settings and words. No camera angles, tech notes, etc.
Now, people do submit spec scripts, which is anything written 'on speculation' - i.e. written for no initial money. They are not, and have never been bibles or shooting scripts.
With all due respect, as someone who has actually has screenplays produced, I can tell you that there's a lot of confusion about this whole "shooting script" business.
Here is how it works.
At a certain point in pre-production -- and this may very well be when the script is still in development and prior to it having gotten a green light, the draft is "locked" -- that means that every scene is given a scene number, every partial scene description is rendered as a full scene, and all of the various locations that have been rendered in different ways, like "A HOUSE, THE HOUSE, BOBBY'S HOUSE -- if they're all the same location, get re-written so that they're all described in the slug lines in the same way.
This usually happens when a producer or a production manager needs to do a detailed budget and location breakdown on the project -- something that you can do in a rough way with a development draft, but you really need a locked, scene-numbered draft to be able to do it efficiently.
From that point on, when scenes are added, they are added as A and B pages and Scenes. If they're removed, they're listed in the script as "omitted."
These won't be the so-called "rainbow pages" -- because that's something that only happens during production. Plus, if there are enough changes at this stage, they can still slam on the brakes, discard all the previous scene numbers and go back to square one and re-number the scenes, because the scene numbers have really only been used for the budget breakdowns -- and chances are, if the script has undergone major revisions, they're going to need a new budget anyway.
Ideally, you want to try to get to the beginning of production with a reasonably clean script as far as A and B pages and omitted scenes are concerned.
The point is -- that script, the script with the scene numbers, at some point is going to go out to directors, to actors, to whomever. Various people and their creative staffs, over the course of months or years, may give notes, supervise drafts, bring on their own favorite writers to do polishes and rewrites (and this can happen long before scene numbers ever come anywhere near a script) and if all of the film gods smile, and ultimately, the right people say yes, the project will get a green light.
At that point -- that screenplay, at whatever state it is in, that precise moment, when the project gets the green light, *is* the production draft.
That is now the shooting script. What makes it the shooting script is the decision to make the movie by whoever has the ability to make that decision.
At that point, copies of that draft will go to all sorts of people and they, in turn, will make all sorts of notes in their particular copies.
Anyone can make suggestions, but in principle, only certain people have the *right* to actually authorize changes in the script. Those are the producers and those who have script approval. That's usually the director and the stars.
But those kinds of changes usually come as a result of development during pre-production. They have to do with things like changes in location, budget issues, adjusting characters to the particular actors who've been cast. Changes arising out of rehearsal sessions.
Those are the things that tend to go into the script as it's revised during pre-production (and as production unfolds). You lose a location or something changes during a scene -- they come up with something on set - and that requires that something else be changes or something else needs to be reshot. So a rewrite is needed.
But what I've never known to happen is for a director, as a result of some conversation with his D.P. to require that "shots" be indicated in a script.
The only exception I can ever remember is when I was asked to include a reference to an "establishing shot" in a situation when I'd cut directly from one interior to another and that was because, obviously, the establishing exterior shot was, in fact, an actual location that needed to be scheduled and budgeted. If it wasn't there in the script, they wouldn't budget for it or schedule it.
But beyond something like that, the director and the D.P. work out their shot lists or story boards and what sort of equipment they need -- will they need a dolly, a crane, will it be hand-held, a multi-camera set up?
And once they do that -- that's what they refer to when they're on the set -- the shot list or the story boards. If they want to know what they're shooting, they're not going to go back and check the script.
All the various departments start with the shooting script and then work from there -- art department works out all of the particular props and set dressing and all the rest. Costuming works out what everyone is going to wear in every single scene. Effects looks to see what sort of effects, practical or CGI or whatever, might be needed in every single shot or scene.
And every single department head shares all of that detailed information with the particular people in their own departments who need to know and all of them coordinate with the director.
But none of it involves having the writer re-write the script, never mind having anybody other than the writer actually go in and rewrite it themselves.
None of it becomes part of the so-called "shooting script."
The only people who need to know about the actual shots are the guys in the camera department -- unless something is happening with the camera that's going to impact somebody else -- like a wall needs to float or dolly tracks need to be laid.
But if you're going to do a dolly shot, the way that works is -- director and DP look at the location, they decide to do the dolly shot, they coordinate with the PM to make sure that it works in terms of time and money, then they arrange with the grip department as to where the tracks have to be laid. The tracks get laid, they rehearse the move with stand ins, then rehearse the scene with the actors and then shoot it.
Something missing? Yes -- the part where they go back and put it into the script. Because there's no reason to do it. At that point in the process, nobody is going back to look at the script to see whether it says, "Dolly" or Steady-cam" or "fly through the air on a tiny little helicopter" or it doesn't say anything at all.
Ultimately, the script says whatever it says. And maybe it describes the scene having been shot a certain way and at some point the director actually bothered to read it and thought, Hm, a dolly shot. And months later, the thought, "Hm, a dolly shot, that's a good idea. What a fucking genius I am," enters his head. Or maybe he comes up with something else and then thinks, "What a fucking genius I am."
The point is, they're going to shoot it the way they want to. There's just no reason to change the script. They know what they're going to do and whoever else needs to know -- they'll tell directly.
They're certainly not going to inform them by way of revised script pages that now a dolly will be needed for Scene #3, on the morning on Day 35.
Same thing with effects and props and costumes. The various departments deal with their own areas. What they need for a certain scene on a certain day they communicate directly to whoever needs to know.
The script is the basis for making those decisions initially, but all of the detailed stuff leaves the script behind.
It's only relevance during the course of production relates to what and who is where and what they say.
What actors are in this scene?
Where is the scene taking place?
What key props are they supposed to have?
What car (if any) are they driving?
What actors are speaking and what are they saying?
And how many quarters of a page of this scene are we scheduled to shoot today?
Before production you can be conveying all sorts of things -- mood, tone, sub-text, emotion.
By the time you get to production -- that's what the script is contributing.
NMS
