The Screenplay: Thoughts on the Scene

The bite-sized chunk of a screenplay

The scene is the part of a screenplay that occupies a single continuous action in time and space. From the scene’s start to its end, time and space are continuous. More, we can say that in a scene time and space are unitary: there is only one time and only one space in a scene. Mostly this last means that the space is one defined place, and that time is a continuous run. If the action continues in what appears to be real time, and the characters (and camera) leave the place and go into another place, the scene ends and a new scene starts.

The scene is a notion that came from the stage. On stage, scenes are broken by fundamental shifts in lighting, or by curtains. The new scene comes up, and offers us in the audience the same place at a later or earlier time, or another place. In earlier, less-fully produced days, scenes broke with an empty stage; this happened when there was no backdrop or only a single backdrop in the theater’s possession, and no curtain either: a play might be performed in an inn’s common room, a stable, or a public square, for instance. Entr’actes were also used to break scenes, moments when dancers or musicians would perform for a number; this kept the audience entertained while the actors changed costumes. And then, a Narrator or Chorus was at one time used to bridge the gulf between scenes, openly explaining events that happened in the meantime or how the time or place has changed, and preparing us, maybe, for the mood of the scene to come.

In movies and television, the lightweight, portable camera allows us to move between spaces within a shot, which is as continuous as it gets. Since each scene is thought to be composed of shots, and a cut or other transition between shots moves us between scenes, in the screenplay, when the screenwriter wishes to combine different locations in this way, he may do it in two ways.

The first way is to specify both locations in the slugline that defines the scene:

INT/EXT JOHN'S HOUSE -- DAY

                      …

INT JOHN'S CAR / JANE'S OFFICE -- NIGHT (INTERCUT)

The first example will take us and the camera with the characters from the inside of the house outside and maybe back inside. The second example shows John and Jane talking on the telephone, cutting back and forth between them in their respective locations, and lets the screenwriter give us their conversation without putting in sluglines for every new line, breaking up the flow of the dialogue and attempting to ‘call the shots’ as to the cutting of the scene.

The second way to combine different locations uses description to ‘call the shot’ that takes us between the two scenes:

INT JOHN'S CAR -- GARAGE -- NIGHT

John hangs up and looks at the phone. Then he switches
off the ignition and gets out. He walks across the
parking garage and CAMERA follows him into the

INT ELEVATOR -- NIGHT

John punches the button to Floor 11 and speed-dials his phone.

                      JOHN
                 (Into phone)
           Jane? I'm on my way up.

In this way of combining locations, the screenplay breaks the two locations into named scenes, each with its own slugline, as usual. But the description tells us that the shot is continuous from the garage to the elevator.

The scene is the smallest level of granularity that appears on a tale’s outline. A fully-developed outline would be a list of the tale’s scenes, in order, each with a word or two summarizing its action.

On the level of the scene, the screenwriter can organize his screenplay, shifting scenes in their order, deleting some, adding others.

A scene can be a small part of a single page in the finished screenplay, or it can run over several pages.

There is a rhythm in a screenplay of scenes as well as of lines within scenes. The rhythm of scenes can result from a consideration of their relative lengths, or their time of day (DAY or NIGHT scenes), or whether they are mostly talk or action, or whether music or ambient sounds will dominate the soundtracks. Scenes can also vary rhythmically according to the number of shots that make them up: a scene shot in a single take contrasts with a scene made up of many shots and takes. But this sort of choice is made by the director and editor, and the screenwriter can only hint at and encourage them to go in this direction, by the way he writes the scenes (he may also know who will direct the screenplay, and write with that director’s style in mind — this is often the case where the screenwriter has worked with the director before, and is engaged on the final draft, often under the director’s supervision, and sometimes during shooting).

The pace of a film results in main from the rhythm of its scenes. A movie made up of many short scenes plays faster than one made up of a few long scenes. Even as a cut between shots releases some tension we feel in the audience, expecting a new shot but denied it for awhile, so too a break between scenes releases some of our tension; scenes at times can seem ‘too long’ and overstay their welcome. Different genres have different paces, and in general scenes ran longer 60 years ago in all genres than they do today. Different directors will have their styles with regard to pacing, and these may run counter to the pace of scenes in the movie: a filmmaker who likes long takes and single-shot scenes might have shorter and more scenes than one who likes quick takes and lots of cuts.

Though the cutting of a film is beyond the screenwriter’s domain (and control) he does control the pace of its scenes, and should be aware of it. A good technique toward this end is to keep a running count of scenes, an average of pages per scene, and a list of the scenes with their page lengths — this last can best be visualized through bar graphs.

(Composed on keyboard Thursday, June 5, 2008)