How to Breakdown a Scene with EP Scheduling

Video Transcript

"Hi Chris Cobb for Expert Village welcome back. So now we are now ready to break down our script. I am going to be using the computer to highlight the script so that is easier for everyone to read and so if you are following along with markers you can mark it up in exactly the same way I am doing it here on the computer and if you are tagging you can do it exactly the same way I am doing it here on the computer. So let's get started. Before you break down our first scene let's make sure the legend is right in front of us. Here's the colors I'm using. Orange for cast. Blue for background actors or extras. Pinks for props and vehicles. I underlined set dressing in pink and then Green for make up and hair with a green underline for wardrobe and yellow is for notes which means everything else. So let's jump into our first scene. Here it is I am using a script called Friends with Benefits. Fade in scene one exterior Tini Bick's bar in Seattle night. So the first big thing to focus on are exterior the set Tini Bick's bar and night. Let's read the scene. Of course it's raining outside in Seattle. Hordes of cabs splash by some with a taxi ad on top like a shark fin. It reads the annual Seattle black and white ball. The cab with the ad pulls up and bar hoppers spill out into. It keeps going but we don't need to because the scene ends. So the first thing we want to pay attention to is right here in the first sentence. Raining outside. Now we're going to make a general note of this. This could be effects or in Seattle it could really be raining so maybe we have to grab our rain gear and have some way to protect our crew from real rain. The next thing of course it's in the next sentence. Hordes of cabs splash by. So let's highlight cabs which is a vehicle. Moving on a taxi ad. Now this could be set dressing or a prop. I am going to call it a prop just for fun and go ahead and highlight it. Let's move on to the next sentence. The cab with the ad pulls up. Well I am going to go ahead and highlight cab because this is one that's featured. So moving on the cab with the ad pulls up. We've already covered the ads so I am not going to highlight it here. Bar hoppers spill out into. Well bar hoppers is that cast or background? Well they don't have any lines that we can see so let's assume that they are background they're here to sell the scene. Highlight them in blue. Notice I've already broken it down into eighths. This is two eighths of a page so we've already got that done. So we can go ahead and inputted into our first break down sheet."