Managing the Feature Film Script to Be Successful

The script is one of the most important areas of your film making process.  If you have a bad script people will not be interested in your movie, you will have difficulty finding actors and your entire project can meet a very premature death.  The solution is you need to ensure you are developing a good script, and making sure that your script is laid out properly.  Ensuring a script is laid out well might seem like only a waste of time, but it will be a small benefit that your actors really appreciate.  Keep in mind, actors who enjoy working with you are much more likely to put a large amount of effort into their role, as well as enjoy working with you again in the future.

Your first task is going to be actually taking ample time to develop a good script.  This does not mean you need to spend a year on it but you can certainly expect to spend a few months.  If you have a Hollywood budget, you would be able to afford to pay several writers to work on the script full time, but as an independent filmmaker you are likely to need to use your own writing skills to create the script.  It is quite important that you do not schedule shooting to start on a script that you have not even started writing yet.  If you find that you will be working on the script for a long period of time it could really throw off the scheduling that you have planned.

You should also take some time in the layout of your script.  While you may want to create small versions of the script, it is very important to realize that this is not something that actors are typically impressed with.  It can make your script much harder to read, which will ultimately turn actors off from your work.  Additionally, you need to ensure that you are using just standard sized paper that is white.  Using cute colors might seem creative, but it will generally make the script harder to ready.  Avoiding emoticons as well as strange fonts is also highly recommended.  Your ultimate goal is a script that is extremely easy to read at a glance.

To ensure that actors are able to find their places in the script quite easily it is a good idea to create a table of contents that is broken down by scenes.  This should be done in connection with all of the pages being clearly numbered.  While putting numbers of the pages might make it look a bit messy, it is critical to do so actors are not wasting time looking around to determine which page they are expected to be on.  Remember, your ultimate job with the script is ensuring that it is laid out quite easily for the actors as well as crew to review.

If you are not sure about the exact way to lay out the script, or you really hate the tedious work of laying out the script you should look into hiring someone to edit the script, which will work well for helping you to get the script completed much faster.  If you cannot afford to hire an editor, or if you have a problem in locating an editor who is willing to work on your script you may need to work on it yourself.  Just be sure to take your time, and make any adjustments that are needed.  Do not be afraid of taking months to years to finish a script entirely.  This is not uncommon and having a good script is much more important than rushing through the process.  You are going to be much happier with the result of your movie if you take your time to correct any mistakes that you locate prior to releasing the script.  Plus, as a final though, always make sure you wait to show the script until it is completely finished if possible.