How to Breakdown Scripts with EP Scheduling

Video Transcript

"Hi Chris Cobb for Expert Village welcome back. So the first thing we have to do before we jump in any further is we have to break our script down into eighths of a page. Why eighths of a page? Well if you saw my last series, here's what I said about that. Now why eighths of a page everybody asked me that certainly some of the young whippier snappers that are learning how to AV and it's very simple remember this a Hollywood is about a hundred years old and a lot of this stuff was was formulated throughout the history of Hollywood but certainly when it became a manufacturing process if you will. When the studios started to churn out movies and they had to have a systematic way to count pages and to understand it between each other what they were talking about when they said that's four eighths of a page that's two eights of a page that's seven and seven eighths of a page etc etc but why eighths of a page. Simple back in the day you know they used to actually look at screen beds, scenes and figure how much of the page they took up and they folded them in eighths now you can fold it one more and try to get ten but then it becomes this little tiny thing that actually doesn't ever breakdown into the way scenes work on a script. But here you can see if you come a little closer. You can see how these lines represent some short scenes. Now this particular page isn't broken down that way but the shortest of scenes that you will find in a script pretty much fit within this kind of a space an eighth of a page. So now that you know why we break down scripts into eights of a page let me also show you how and again we are going to go back to a previous clip. Here we go. So you take the script put the brads over there. You?re just going to walk through it with your pencil and you almost scan it, you read it a bit but as much as anything you kind of scanning it and your looking for the visual pattern in here. So for instance this first scene boom I am going to call it two eights of a page and then write it right here in the margins. The rest of the scenes, scene two takes up the rest of the page and so if it's eight eighths of a page remember so that it equals one page the rest must equal six eighths. Ok and I write down right here in the margin. two six eights. So then on to the next page and this entire page is a continuation of scene two so I just put a one. That's all one page eight eighths of a page and then I am on to the next page and here we have a break and scene three enters. So this bit of the scene is I am going to say again it's two lines and one shot. I am going to call it actually one eighth because it looks like there's a lot going on here and I am going to call this what else seven eighths. Sorry if my seven is a little funky that's how I write them."