Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a blueprint for producing a motion picture. It can be adapted from a previous work such as a novel, play or short story, or it may be an original work in and of itself. Every year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out Oscars in both Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay categories. In the United States of America, the Writers Guild of America has final control on who may be awarded screenwriting credit for a screenplay.

The shooting script

A shooting script is a version of a script from which a movie is actually shot; it includes scene numbers, camera angles and certain directors' notes -- and it is generally fiercely marked up by the script supervisor and other production workers, while the writer's draft is simply the skeleton around which the production is built.

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Once a script is approved for production, and pre-production begins, it is scene-numbered and page-locked. Scenes are numbered for easy reference, and page-locking allows everyone to keep the same copy of the script even if the script changes. Changes are supplied as colored pages which people involved in production insert in their script, replacing or adding to the pages already there. Since writing often goes on even during production itself, most real movie scripts are a rainbow of gold, pink, blue, green and other colors.

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The order in which colored pages (often referred to as 'pink pages' whatever color they are) are introduced into the script is rigidly fixed for a particular production.

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