Format question: Slugging

Sure, mini-slugs are perfectly valid,

INT. HOUSE - NIGHT

LIVING ROOM

Bill watches TV.

BATHROOM

Bill brushes his teeth.

BEDROOM

Bill, wearing Scooby Doo pajamas, climbs into bed.

...etc. Of course, since you're a writer/director, you can do anything you damn well please with your script anyway.

If a prodco picks up the script, someone will edit it to change all the mini-slugs into regular sluglines with EXT./INT. and DAY/NIGHT info.

-Derek
My Web Page - shameless vampyre fiction & other shameless writings.
I could ride you at a gallop until your legs buckled and your eyes rolled up. I've got muscles you've never even dreamed of. I could squeeze you until you pop like warm champagne and you'd beg me to hurt you just a little bit more. And you know why I don't?

yep

DoubleIT said:

Does it put one at a disadvantage to do minislugs? The only thing about full slugs is there is that LONG line across the page so your eye clearly can tell you have changed locations.

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I hate reading minislugs in a script becuase when Im flying thru a juicy SP I sometimes miss the minislug and it throws me off but, on the otherside I love using them becuase they help keep your flow moving.

DoubleIT said:

Thats exactly my worry. So maybe once I am done I should go back and make them all full?

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Oh God, don't do this.

Actually, what you've done is known as "slugging" and your headers "BEDROOM," "BATHROOM," "LIVING ROOM," or whatever are sluglines, not "mini-slugs."

Anything with an INT or an EXT has always been known as a "scene caption" or a "scene header," not a slugline.

But this has become confused in recent years until people are referring to INTs and EXTs and "sluglines" and anything less becomes a "mini-slug."

It's all wrong.

But, be that as it may, there's no reason at all not to slug an INT or an EXT when your action is moving from one place to another within the perimeter of the scene (the INT or the EXT).

You should, however, not waste a line by doing this:

INT JOE'S HOUSE

BATHROOM
Joe brushes his teeth.

BEDROOM
Joe gets dressed.

KITCHEN
Joe eats breakfast.

but rather form it like this:

INT JOE'S HOUSE - BATHROOM
Joe brushes his teeth and finishing that, goes into the

BEDROOM
where he gets dressed, then EXITS to the

KITCHEN
and enjoys breakfast.

with the "read through" aspect optional.

As someone noted (Paterso mebbe?), when your spec is recranked into a shooting script, these will become INTs, but that's to serve needs in production, whereas what you want is a good read, and hence the slugging, with "naked" slugs, that is, no INT with them.

One might do a similar thing with an exterior as well:

EXT CORNER OF MAIN AND BROADWAY - DAY
Cezar and Hootie run out of the store on the corner, pistols in hand. Hootie has a bag of loot.

A Police cruiser zooms up, two COPS leap out, chase after Cezar and Hootie, who run in opposite directions, and for their lives.

ALLEY (HALF A BLOCK UP)
First Cop nabs Hootie.

ROOF NEAR CORNER
Second Cop nabs Cezar.

THE CORNER
More cop cars have arrived.

First and Second Cops come, bring their captives.

The captives are slammed into a cruiser, which roars away.

NEXT SCENE

[end]

Quick and dirty but you get the idea.

Keep slugging!

Thats exactly my worry. So maybe once I am done I should go back and make them all full?

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That's optional, but don't feel obliged. Simple solution, if you put two spaces before the mini-slug (like you would before a scene heading) then readers will notice it more easily.

Nothing to get paranoid about, just use common sense, which you can buy at most natural food stores.

-Derek
My Web Page - shameless vampyre fiction & other shameless writings.
You made me have a bowel movement in my britches. I ain't never gonna forgive you for that.

If you're using mini slugs, make sure you format them as a Scene Heading, then delete the INT. or EXT., especially in Final Draft. If you don't, it's a pain for the LP when s/he is trying to do the budget because they don't show up as location changes, which they are.

Chesher Cat said:

If you're using mini slugs, make sure you format them as a Scene Heading, then delete the INT. or EXT., especially in Final Draft. If you don't, it's a pain for the LP when s/he is trying to do the budget because they don't show up as location changes, which they are.

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Well, not usually.

"Slugging a scene" usually refers to writing (declaring) some or many of the individual ANGLES that will be required to complete the scene cinematically, e.g., POVs, reactions shots, two shots, close ups, and the like. In the spec script form, known also as the "master scene form," we don't usually slug our scenes, not at least in the manner a director will slug them when he shoots them. I can write a two-minute master in my spec that a director may find fifteen different ANGLES he wants to get, in addition to the master. A couple of POVs, a close up or two, an establishing shot at the outset, a cutaway, reaction shots. All his purvue.

Well, that's what directors get paid to do.

But since the scene is almost always filmed in one location or place or on a sound stage, there's no "location change" involved in shooting all those ANGLES.

A spec writer isn't writing shooting script.

The need to slug scenes in a spec can easily be overblown and many will accuse it of being "directorial," which, in fact, it is.

A spec writer can control the shots to some extent by the manner in which he or she forms the action into paragraphs, each one of which or many of which can be thought of as a shot.

Nicely designed and well formed master scenes usually need little or no slugging in the spec to convey the movie to a reader. That's why the spec script is known as the "master scene" form, eh?