off screen or off camera?

Whats the difference?
Is there a time when one should be used over the other?

Use off screen.

Off camera is irrelevant, since your audience won't be looking through the camera.

Use (O.S.) to mean someone off the screen (also, therefore, off camera)

Why is there an O.C. anyway?

O.C.

As an Orange County resident, I ask myself that very question every day.

Someone asked this in Done Deal a couple weeks back, the consensus was that OS is a film term and OC is a TV term, referring to the same thing.

I think I've seen OC used in Tarantino scripts but hey, who's going to tell him he's wrong?

-Derek
My Web Page - naked women, bestial sex, and whopping big lies.

TV uses O.S. too. I think there's a slight difference (again, it's "I think").

O.S. is generally used. When a character is speaking off somewhere (on a phone, in the bathroom yelling out, etc.)

O.C. seems to me a little more camera specific. That is, if the camera is on a close up of a character, and he's having a conversation with another character (who is present in the same scene but not in the close up), then the other character would be O.C.

That's what I think...