New Format? :-/

I got this mail as well. I hope someone here can tell us what this new format is.

That sounds like a HUGE scam to me. Hollywood moves at the speed of cold molasses. Screenplays from the 30s look pretty much just like the ones today. They have no REASON to change formats. Why change what isn't broken?

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Nobody mentioned it at the Austin Film Festival last month. Plenty of screenwriters, producers, managers, agents and directors on hand in panel discussions and such. No one mentioned 'new format' - everyone talked about 'industry standard' formatting - and using the scriptwriting programs like Final Draft, Movie Magic and such.

Having said that, there are stylistic variations that come into vogue - like dropping 'cut to' or the use of other terms. But a whole new format? I doubt it.

Ron Maiden said:

Got a mail from MovieBytes and there's a bit from PAGE in it trying to pimp a book, telling me it's a godsend because there's a new format in Holywood etc etc :
"Did you know there's a brand new formatting style being used here in Hollywood? We're going to send you a sample of how it looks. Many professional screenwriters are now formatting their scripts this way. Agents encourage it and producers love it, and you're not going to read about it in any other screenwriting book - it's that new! But if you format your script the way the pros do, Hollywood execs will automatically assume you're "in the know." "

is there? or are they just blowing smoke to get some money?

Click to expand...

This sounds extraordinarily unlikely to me. The so-called "standard" format doesn't exist just for kicks. Its primary function is as a *production tool* -- so that when the time comes and they do a script breakdown into X number of pages and half pages and quarter pages and schedule "3 1/2" pages to be shot on the morning of X day -- that those 3 1/2 pages are really 3 1/2 pages and not 3 pages or 4 1/2 pages because somebody has screwed around with the font or the margins or something else.

Because when you move from pages to production, a page turns into rental hours, day out of days and dollars.

Now, when you get into complex action sequences, of course things are going to be different and that's why, when you have sequences like that, they don't literally go by the script -- those things are storyboarded, broken out into shots, etc. -- there's a whole intermediate process for action scenes and effects scenes.

But for regular sorts of sequences -- just people walking and talking and doing regular things in rooms and in streets, where things aren't blowing up and people aren't having squibs wired to them -- there's an expectation that a page is a page is a page.

And the last thing a production wants to have to deal with is to discover that they're running over-budget or behind schedule because some sort of weird-ass formatting has jammed more lines or words or action into a script per page than is usually found in standard format.

NMS

If it smells like baloney, and slices thin like baloney, it's baloney. If someone is selling you, another unwashed slob with celtx and one script, an exclusive INSIDE TRACK to fame and groupies in Hollywood, for a few hours worth of your salary...come on. Use your judgement, you'll need it when you meet a real producer. Or if.