You just typed “FADE TO BLACK” on your script. Congrats! But your script isn’t quite ready for production. A film production must run off a locked script so everyone has the same info. During pre-production your script becomes the blueprint for shooting the film. And everyone must operate off the same blueprint. But what if changes to the script need happen while shooting? It happens all of the time. Here’s the process:
Before locking your script you’ll need to add scene numbers. Why? Because a production runs off page and scene numbers. When you’re on set speaking with your DP about part of the script, you want to be able to say, “Look at page two scene eleven, for this I’m thinking…” To do this, you need page and scene numbering turned on.
For Final Draft, go to Production > Scene Numbers.
For Fade In go to Production > Scene & Element Numbering > Check Show Numbering.
You’ll see the numbering appear typically on the left and right sides of your script page.
Bravo! The scene numbers should never change from here on out. But again, what happens if you need to make changes to a script once production starts?
In an ideal world you’d finish your script and never make any more changes. This never happens. Personally, I’m making story changes even in the sound design and color grading phases of a movie. That’s just me, and it’s the beauty of independent film. This isn’t always so easy in the studio world.
The official way to prep your script for pre-production and production is to lock it. When you lock a script, page numbers and scene numbers remain unchanged even if you add or remove content from the script. This is crucial for larger productions with crew and department heads.
Example, let’s say you want to add a new scene between scenes 3 & 4 in your completed script. The proper way to do this is add it and label the scene as 3A. This will also bump page one onto a new page called page 1A. Then all subsequent scenes and pages remain exactly the same. If you added two new scenes between scenes 3 & 4 they would be 3A and 3B. You get it.
The good news? Final Draft and Fade In can handle this for you.
In Final Draft go to Production > Lock Pages. You’ll see a small lock appear on the upper right of the script. Now your pages and scenes are locked. If you add a new scene heading in between two existing scenes, you’ll notice Final Draft doesn’t change the scene numbering—it leaves the new scene without a number. You can then click Production > Edit Scene and name it correctly.
In Fade In go to Production > Lock Page Numbers. This locks the pages. Next, to lock the scenes click on an actual scene heading in your script and go to Production > Lock Element Numbers. When you do this Fade In will auto-increment your new scenes for you with the corresponding letters.
What happens if you change a scene that already exists? You need to tell Final Draft and Fade In to indicate this.
In Final Draft go to Production > Revision Mode. Everything you change or add will be marked with an asterisk. You can also manually do this by highlighting the text and going to Production > Mark Revised. To change page colors, this is done under Production > Revisions.
In Fade In go to Production > Revisions and choose the revision color. This will also place and asterisk and change the color of the text.
When changes are made to the script during production, everyone must be alerted to what has changed. To do this, you pass out page revisions that are color coded vs handing out complete new versions of the script.
For example: If you were two days into shooting a film and made changes to page 5 of the script, that page would be reprinted on blue paper. If you made changes to page 5 again, it would be printed on pink. Then yellow. etc. Everyone in Hollywood knows the color order of revisions. Here they are:
White, Blue, Pink, Yellow, Green, Goldenrod, Buff, Salmon, Cherry
Some TV shows have adapted their own versions of the above. But this is the official list from the WGA.
Cool, that all makes sense. But how do you track it all? Final Draft and Fade In can do this for you.
I’m sure no production has ever had a script that isn’t tweaked while shooting. So even though it’s a little unnerving to lock your script, you just need to bite the bullet and do it! It’s not as difficult as it may seem, and modern screenwriting applications do the muscle work for you. Imagine the typewriter days!
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