SCRIPT FORMATS

Download formats and templates below, but first read this:

Is it important to format scripts correctly?
This is more an issue with cinema and feature length TV scripts than with other forms of TV, which tend to be less prescriptive, but the fact is that it is crucially important to use the correct format for any feature length drama script.

Why is it important?
There are a number of possible answers that go around. One is that the specific use of non-proportional courier font and the designated layout makes scripts conform closely to 1 page per minute.

Well, dialogue tends to run faster (2 pages per minute or so) while action can be much, much slower (on Cimino's Deer Hunter there's a party described in a couple of lines that runs for over four minutes on its own). And yet it is true that most scripts, if the balance of dialogue and action is about right, tend to work out at a page a minute. On the other hand, many don't!

Another, more credible, explanation is that the cinema layout we use gives a good visual balance between description and dialogue, ensuring that if there is too much of either then it shows up in a very obvious way.

The most important reason that you need to know, though, is that any professional in the industry will be very wary of a script that is not in correct format. How unfair and unjust! Perhaps. But look at it this way. There are only two reasons why a script would not be in correct format.

1. The writer has not been around long enough to know the difference.
2. The writer is too bolshy (or lazy) to care.

Either way, do you want to work with that writer? Speaking personally, in my entire career I have only come across one incorrectly formatted script that turned out to be worth reading. And that writer turned out to be impossible to work with... My case rests.