The Screenplay Format Reference | Hacker News Reader

The Screenplay Format Reference

trilane.com

28 pointsjstrieb22 comments

I want to recommend https://fountain.io/ for writing screenplays. It is a markup language (a bit like markdown) but for screen plays.

I'm currently taking a screenwriting class (hence finding and posting this link), and have been looking for exactly this sort of thing so that I can version-control my assignments. Thanks!

Speaking as someone who hated FD for years and years, highland blew my mind and continues to be my favorite way to write. It got me into markdown and git too in a real way.

I want to recommend Highland if you’re on mac. It’s a paid app but it’s by the creator of the spec and it’s brilliant.

Alternately, I’ve found the Fountain packages for Emacs and Sublime Text to be stellar — emacs far more so (it’s actually my preferred way currently), but sublime text is most of the way there without the formatting.

Author of fountain-mode for Emacs here; this warms my heart to hear :)

Let's also give a shoutout to Stu Maschwitz who created most of the Fountain spec beforehand when it was called Screenplay Markdown: https://prolost.com/blog/2011/8/9/screenplay-markdown.html

Thanks, I'll look into that that.

I'm trawling my hard drives to find it, it's been two years since I used it, but somewhere I have a node script and css for outputting script format in pdf from markdown. there isn't much too it puppeteer, css and a couple of substitutions do all the work, oh that's right, there was also a couple of hooks into the markdown preview enhanced plugin for vs code so I could see a live preview.

This made it simple to check my screenplay source into git for collaborating.

The Hollywood screenplay format is one of the most grotesque offences against typography and design that I have ever encountered, but the upside is that the uniformity makes sure that every screenplay is evaluated on its content and not on its print design.

There's a reason for it: it's designed so that a page of text translates to more or less one minute of screen time, so you can get a reliable estimate of how long the movie will run by looking at the page count.

(Source: I took a screenwriting class when I was living in LA. If you live in LA long enough and you don't write a screenplay they kick you out.)

(Here is the screenplay I wrote, in case anyone is interested: http://flownet.com/ron/control.pdf)

What would you change to make screenplays better from a design perspective?

Not parent: As both a designer and filmmaker I would change nothing. Important part of the screenplays format is IMO that the various departments have enough space to annotate their stuff at the sides. The current format is good at this.

A proportionally spaced typeface and the use of bold instead of ALL CAPS.

Pretty weird that is has to be monospaced. I guess that enforces constant "density"?

It's mainly an artefact of typewriters that people are already used to and don't want to change since it's worked well for a century already.

Also, it's a bit easier to read in a hurry. Films and TV are almost invariably shot out of sequence for logistical reasons so actors and production crew are constantly consulting copies of the script under less than ideal reading conditions.

From what I've heard, the exact opposite is true: if you don't have the proper formatting, your screenplay is evaluated exclusively based on the (improper) print design since nobody will actually read it.

The format for production screenplays evolved according to the needs of the people needing the physical pages on set, e.g. dialogue has a lot of whitespace so that director and actors can keep notes there. Also, scene headings need to convey a lot of information in one line: on which set the scene in shot, whether it exists as a continuation of the previous scene, whether it's shot on location, and what lighting equipment will be needed.

It's a storytelling format that also needs to function as a reference document. It's very efficient for its requirements.

There's also the idea that one page = one minute of screen-time, but this is a bit of a red herring. Rather it's that overall a 100-page screenplay, if it contains a conventional balance of action and dialogue, with conventional length of scenes, shot at a conventional pacing, will likely result in a 100-minute film once edited. ALL IS LOST is 32 pages and 105 min film, THE SOCIAL NETWORK is 164 pages, 120 min film.

Interesting to compare with source code which also generally use monospace and indentation but otherwise no fancy typography.

This is exactly what I thought of too.

If you think about it, the screenplay is a form of source code (or at least a form of specification), similar to a printed musical score.

Screenplays are working documents that multiple teams of people from different disciplines work from. Form should always follow function, and the screenplay format does just that. It's got nothing to do with "evaluating" the "content".

Anybody knows what software do professional script writers (the ones working for the industry) use? I've seen the screenplay format and I don't believe they do all of that by hand; it would be tedious.

Most screenwriters I know use Final Draft. https://www.finaldraft.com/

John August, a well-respected writer and host of the ScriptNotes, built and uses Highland: https://highland2.app/screenwriters.php

As nomla indicates, the top dog is, by far, Final Draft. It is actually a pretty good product to boot.

There's also a good Fountain extention for VS Code, some support in Scrivener, and FadeIn is quite good. But no matter what, you'll need Final Draft format.

PS. I really miss the old Sophocles tool for Windows.

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