INT. BASEMENT - NIGHT

Karen sits at the computer reading the lousy screenplay with numerous slugline errors.

KAREN: What the hell was this person thinking?

GOD (OS): The same thing you were, when you wrote your screenplay.

I spent the last two years making a movie from a screenplay I had written on Final Draft. Here's something I barely thought about while writing, but when it came time to plan the shooting schedule I wanted to kick my own ass. As you probably or should know if you have ten scenes in Karen's BASEMENT within a 100 page screenplay, six are day and four are night, you're going to want to shoot them all at the same time. So, the scheduler, costumer and everyone else working pre-shoot needs to know this information. If you're actually shooting in a basement with a window, you'll want to shoot the day time shots during the day and the night time shots when sunlight isn't flooding the room. Even if there is no window, time consuming lighting needs to be set. No one starts at page 1 and hand writes a list of INT BASEMENT DAY, page 2 EXT HOUSE NIGHT. It's all done through the program.
So, here's what you HAVE TO DO. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! INT. EXT. If a character is INT and they step EXT to light a cigarette, There has to be a new slugline for that "lighting a cigarette" shot. IT'S A SHOT THAT NEEDS TO BE FILMED. LOCATION If you have a list of rooms - KAREN'S BEDROOM KAREN'S LIVING ROOM KAREN'S BATHROOM KAREN'S KITCHEN Always write it this way. It's not KAREN'S BEDROOM for one scene and BEDROOM for another. Even if the action is continuous from one room to another, the person making the list is going by what the program tells them. They are not reading the script, they're reading the slugline. So KAREN'S BEDROOM and BEDROOM are NOT the same room. DAY/NIGHT If you are INT. DAY and you go to another room, you still have to put DAY. There is never CONTINUOUS, or MORNING or DUSK or MIDNIGHT or AM or PM. The person creating the schedule needs to know precisely what's going on. If you don't write it, they have to dig into the script to find the answers. This may sound like something small and petty, BUT IT'S NOT. Trust me, I worked through this on my own screenplay, and had I written it correctly, what should have taken minutes, took hours (if not days) to correct. If your sluglines are wrong or incomplete, a reader will probably toss your script no matter how good the actual story is. I'm reading a script now where the father and son are in a room. The son goes screaming to his sister in another room, and the sister yells at him from OS. Where's the shot? The father or the son? Did the camera leave the room? Not according to this writer. Yet the father is not reacting to the son. So basically you have a shot of the wall. Here's an example from my own script, that would have destroyed the shooting. When the editor was putting the movie together an entire shot would have been missing. INT. TIM'S BEDROOM - DAY Tim paces. Mom tries the door, but it's locked. MOM (OS) Tim let me in now. TIM: Go away mommy. MOM (OS) Timmy open this door. Tim opens the door, slams Mom up against the hallway wall. He grabs her by the throat. The scene left the bedroom. But, I didn't signify it with a new slugline, because it's one simple line. If the hallway scenes were already shot everything would have to be set-up, re-lit, recostumed to complete the scene. I have one scene in my movie where a woman's house is in 3 different states. How messed up would it have been to miss some shots? If it's INT. KAREN'S BASEMENT - NIGHT on page 1 at there's another scene at the same location on page 37, the slugline better be EXACTLY the same. NO EXCEPTIONS!!!! Until you've actually sat down and figured out a shooting schedule you don't think about this simple line. It's SO IMPORTANT.