How to Construct Setting & Time Page for Plays

Video Transcript

"STEVE CAVERNO: Steve Caverno, on behalf of Expert Village, here today to talk to you about formatting and play production. Now, we're going to go into setting in time. Where is your play set, and what time period does it takes place, and how many days does it take place? These are important things to notate when you're submitting a script to someone. In that way, they'll know how many sets they will need for the production, and they'll also know how long the production lasts, and how many different scenes they're going to have to stage. Right here, we have an example. Basically, we'll just going to list both these things on the page, the setting, centered, a police station in Reno, Nevada. So, in that way, if it's set in an exotic location, if it's set in Florence, Italy, then the costume designer can start looking at some of the costumes. The set designer can start looking at some of the scenery and some of the styles that go on there. So, this way, we can have what we're going to need in a police station. Well, we're going to need desks. You're going to need chairs. You might even need a jail cell. Things like that which you can use in this set. And then, time, early evening, late evening, and dawn on the following day. So, this tells that you'll going to have three scenes, in an early evening, late evening, and dawn. So in that way, that will include a full lighting plot. The lighting designer will be able to look at that and say, "Well, I can have a window in the back of a stage. In that way, we can have a little light that shines through the window and change the glow of light. So, in the dark scenes, we'll have it dark, and maybe we'll have the dusk scene so it's a little bit darker, a little bit lighter. And then we'll really have a dark scene. And then when the dawn starts coming, we'll brighten it up a little bit. That would give them a little bit of a queue as to how to light the scene. And then we'll say October, 1996. So that way, we'll know that this happens about almost about twelve years ago now, well, about eleven actually. So in this, we'll be able to tell when this occurred, what time of day, well, some of the things we're going to need for the set. This gives us just a general information. It's not that specific. You're going to do that in the actual pages of the script. But, right here, we're just giving you an overview, just kinda filling them in on the basics. And that's what a setting in a time page is basically functioned to do. "