Breaking Down the Script

This may sound barbaric to you, but it is actually a helpful and highly necessary practice.

For breaking down a script essentially means that you analyse a film or TV script and break it down into its most basic elements during preproduction. These elements are, in order of importance:

1) actors

2) extras

3) props

4) costume

5) special effects

6) stunts

7) cars or animals

8) make up and hair

9) foley

10) special equipment

11) sound track

12) weapons

All these elements above are colour coded in different colours to make them easily discernible with only a quick glance at the breakdown. And even though it might vary from one production company to another, the colour key once employed in a script needs to be consistently adhered to throughout the entire production.

Here are different colour codes or keys to get an impression:

Once this is done, the relevant aspects/elements are then ordered in handy lists to make them easily accessible for the professionals who need them afterwards (e.g. costume items and props for the art department, actors and extras for the producer and casting director, special equipment for the camera department or foleys and sound tracks for the sound editor).

Afterwards, scenes are then numbered alongside the scene headers and 'locked' after approval, which is usually done by the first AD (assistant director). The result is now called a shooting script and will be used for the rest of the pre-production and production.

But stop, that's not all of it! Follow the Rule of Eigths!

This, again, is referring to the physical layout of the paper onto which the script is printed. For if you follow the correct industry format of film scripts in regard to font, font size, margins, and indents, you should ideally end up with a page with a text body length of eight inches and the duration of approx. one minute.

Each inch is then marked down in order to get a feeling for the duration of each action within that minute and for the duration of an entire scene. For those of you who love the math behind it, each inch is essentially 7,5 seconds worth. It is furthermore essential that you, and your lucky script supervisor one day, do have exactly the same measure down, or else it will be nearly impossible matching these two up during the busy production. Which can be double-checked by counting the complete amount of 1/8ths per scene at the end of each one.

Depending on how much budget you have, how experienced you are, and how complicated your script is, you can film up to five pages a day on dialogue-prone scenes. However, any scene that involves quick and/or multiple actions, a lot of coordination and/or repetition, high production values and/or lot of cast, crew, and props will take significantly longer to shoot.

After the marking down of the script, these highlighted pieces of information are physically cut into strips of paper to be ordered together onto a production board for easier access and control.

The scenes are then ordered according to locations and time to facilitate production; scenes that take place at the same location are compiled into the same list to later help create a coherent production schedule and avoid constantly - and unnecessarily - travelling between locations.

As a matter of course, this can be done digitally as well, as e.g. with Celtx and Final Cut Pro, but I would personally prefer the physical paper strip.

For the first, I have only had subpar experience of the quality of Celtx and - at least now - no access to Final Cut Pro. For the second, I tend to better memorise information and where to find it when using pen and paper. Or, as we say in German: Von der Hand in den Kopf ('From the hand into the head.').

We will see how and whether I can use that knowledge above in the upcoming production, in case I should be designated a producers role. As of now, my breakdown for my most favourite script is like this: