Scene headings

I use headings other than day or night, but not continuous or moments later, because if they are viewed independantly then they don't tell you anything.

I generally stick to DAY or NIGHT, but I occasionally use LATER...

FR

This is an odd thing, because the whole DAY/NIGHT, FADE IN/FADE OUT thing is useless in spec scripts, but hang on out of inertia while other stuff fades away.

But there are really only two legitimate slugs: NIGHT and DAY. These refer to shooting conditions. Probably nobody will toss your script if you use SUNSET or some such, but it's not a good idea to screw around with this: readers are picky and looking for an excuse to ditch your script and move to the next one.

LATER is REALLY useless. You're invoking something that doesn't convey on screen, for one thing. My suggestion would be to just forget about those tags, just put them in mindlessly like FADE IN:

It's either night or day, it's either inside or outside. That's it. If I run into something that I just can't make fit (it's a timeless period set inside a virtual hallucination) I just leave the tag out.

why is "day/night" useless in a spec script?

Dpaterso, you misunderstood ron maiden, who was not talking about a transition between day and night, but actually "Day" or "Night" since Dustry Joe called them useless, which I disagree with.

"Yeah, maybe I'm not awake yet, ignore me."
good hogmanay, i take it? :-D

yeah - what i meant was, surely every scene must be specified as a time placement? granted, if your scene is EXT at a school breaktime i think we could safely assume it aiin't night, eg, but looking over some of my stuff just as a for instance, i can see bits where the setting of day or night is important but there's nothing in the actualy wording that might allow someone to distinguish this. can't think of anytime where stuff like that in a slug line WOULD be useless, TBH :-/

I'm trying to tell a story, so I will use "MOMENTS LATER" or "CONTINUOUS" very frequently to keep the reader on board with the pacing. I often find if I just generically use "DAY" or "NIGHT" it won't necesarilly be clear that this scene is indeed just a few momets after the previous one, or even (more importantly) a few hours after the previous one--even though during those few short hours the sun has gone down. And so I want the reader to know that the characters are still wearing the exact same clothes they were wearing in the prior scene and that this is NOT another day with different clothes.

Ron Maiden said:

can't think of anytime where stuff like that in a slug line WOULD be useless, TBH :-/

Click to expand...

It could be useless if you're in an elevator, or a windowless basement... a cave deep underground with no natural light source... locked in a closet...