info - formatting computer screens in a script

Do you mean something like...

She sits down at the computer and waits a second for the program to load then she starts to type.

ANGLE ON MONITOR SCREEN

Which reads:

ASSAULT VICTIM IN HOSPITAL
Last night Jane Doe was brutally attacked blah blah blah blah blah blah etc.​

INSERT - COMPUTER SCREEN

"Blah blah blah blah."

BACK TO SCENE

Oops.

Yeah, I forgot to add the...

BACK TO SCENE​

...bit at the end.

"On the computer screen, graphics reveal a downswing for the Democrats"

"The computer screen slowly types out a message.

ONSCREEN
Your computer is trying to kill you."



There is seldom any need to get fancy and start calling out camera angles and such.

Just say what's happening.

Team 2012 said:

There is seldom any need to get fancy and start calling out camera angles and such.

Just say what's happening.

Click to expand...

Good advice for a spec script. I just finished a draft of a script that was further a long than a spec, so I was in that mind set.

If this is just you at the moment and you're gonna be trying to find a home for it after, Team's advice is probably safer.

Padma, that's good -- spec scripts read better without any camera angles.

As for show vs. tell, when editing, you can look specifically for tells ("Fred feels sad") and replace them with shows ("Fred sighs and rests his chin on the heel of his hand"). If you do a pass just for that you can probably replace most of them, though some are elusive of course