How to format an on-screen note
Something I have to deal with at least three times in the screenplay I’m currently working on that I have NO idea how to do. A character is handed a postcard, note or reads a list. Cue insert shot for audience to read-along. An example:
Dear Dad – okay, it’s better than I expected.
There have been some interesting developments
but I still miss baseball. I still want to visit you
in Florida.
Love, your son, Nathan.
How on earth do you format something like that in Final Draft? The few screenwriter friends I have are similarly perplexed by this, simple though the answer may be.
– Tim
Brooklyn NY
Pretty much answered here: Formatting text shown on screen. 1
First off, if you’re doing it “at least three times,” you’re doing it too much. Audiences don’t go to movies to read. Limit yourself to once, and keep it short.
If a character reads the note aloud (either on-screen, or in voice-over), just keep the text in his dialogue block. You may want to italicize it for clarity.
If the audience needs to read it, try using dialogue margins with no character name — if your screenwriting software will allow you. Otherwise, break it into lines roughly the width of a dialogue block and center them. Again, italics may help.
A sharp-eyed reader may prove me wrong, but in 30+ scripts, I don’t think I’ve ever had a block of text the audience needed to read. It’s something you can almost always write around.
- Folks, try the Answer Finder. ↩
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June 2nd, 2009 at 11:24 am
A sharp-eyed reader may prove me wrong, but in 30+ scripts, I don’t think I’ve ever had a block of text the audience needed to read.
What about the lengthy scene in FULL THROTTLE where Natalie pores over Remembrance of Things Past and the camera just lingers on page after page whilst Phillip Glass’s perfectly monotonic score hangs in the background? A tricky bit to pull off, but James Ivory shot the hell out of it.
(And yes, I know I’m just asking to be punched in the face.)
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:33 am
A good example of a note in a film is when Vincent meets Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction. You can find that script online to see how Tarantino formatted it. To spare you time, it’s cut and pasted below.
EXT. MARSELLUS WALLACE’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Vincent walks toward the house and pulls a note off the door
CLOSEUP – NOTE
The Note reads:
“Hi Vincent, I’m getting dressed. The door’s open. Come inside and make yourself a drink. Mia”
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 am
Isn’t asking audiences to read along a bad idea anyway (without voice over) when it comes to translations of the movie? German versions of movies tend to leave the english text in such notes, but have german voice-over. If there’s only text, then a lot of people here wouldn’t understand it.
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:54 am
@Torsten: If there’s only text in the original version without someone reading it, they put a voice-over in the German dub anyways.
Store signs, however, are usually left alone, unless they’re in Chinese or Japanese or something like that. Guess they don’t matter as much.
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I am not so experienced with different freestyle formats. But probably I would do like the pulp fiction example above.
But perhaps italic text, or does italic already fill a function in formatting?
/jon
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I’m inclined to agree – don’t make them read.
I generally will handle it thusly:
Susan picks a note up off the desk, reads it. “MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME. LIQUOR’S IN THE CABINET. JOHN.”
This leaves it to the director to decide if we need an insert, Susan’s V.O., an internal dialogue, John’s V.O., whatever. The important thing is it’s a note, she reads it, and we get to know what it says.
I guess that’s a variation on Tarantino’s take.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Personally, speaking, I find it exceedingly annoying when I have to read notes on-screen without accompanying V.O. Oftentimes they are shot for the big screen, and I have to get up to look at it carefully on my TV at home because it was framed too small for home-viewing.
Not to mention the problem of reading various handwriting styles (assuming it’s not typed), which take a second to recognize, process, and get used to in order to read them properly.
The exception to this is when it’s a simple one- or two-word note, like “Dinner’s in the fridge. Love, Mom”
But important things? I recommend V.O. and thus your formatting problem is solved.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:00 am
The only time it would be vital for the audience to see the written version of the note would surely be if the voiceover said something completely different as either a plot point (‘he lied!’) or a gag, and even then it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth…
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:30 am
Invariably, when I see a note at the cinema – even if it’s a two-word note, held for five seconds – once the camera cuts away, there’s a chorus of ‘What? What did it say?’.
Didn’t stop me writing a note into my own script. Live dangerously, and all that.
June 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Seems to me that older films (pre-1960’s) tended to use un-voiced-over notes without a second thought. Penny Serenade comes to mind – a letter was used to convey a major piece of information. I would imagine that back then, no one was considering ‘you can’t read it on the small screen’ because movies were usually only seen in the theaters. But there were also plenty of films with dedications (Wizard of Oz, Disney’s Peter Pan) or voice-less intros (Star Wars, of course) which appear to occur less and less in the modern day, but that’s more out of avoiding cliche than anything else, I would guess. Not to mention the assumption that we are mostly illiterate, which is why we’d rather -watch- our literature than read it — but that’s another story.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I know these references may not be the best but I immediately thought of Old School when “The Godfather” read Frank’s note that was taped on his door. If I recall correctly, he simply turned his back to the camera and then Frank’s voice read it in a voice over. May not be the best, but it worked.
I also thought of Super Troopers when the Captain of the Highway Patrol read the letter to his men from the governor.
June 3rd, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Interestingly, I just watched a film in which a note and its contents were a central plot device, “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956, dir. Hitchcock).
Several key lines of dialogue we whispered to the protagonist (played by Jimmy Stewart), towards the end of the first act. The audience could (in theory) hear them, but I had trouble making it out myself. The protagonist then wrote them down. Maybe ten minutes later we were shown the handwritten note on screen with no voice over. At the end of the second act the protagonist read the note aloud clearly. I thought it was a decent way to handle it, especially considering how important it was to the story.
Interestingly, it turns out that this film is a remake. In fact, Hitchcock remade his own film! The original is circa 1934, starring Charles Bennett. I wonder how the two films, and scripts, differ. FYI, I know nothing about the 1934 version; I don’t even know if the note device is present in it. The physical object isn’t particularly important, just the words on it.
June 5th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
In my first script, I had a couple of notes (and a couple of phone calls) that were cut as soon as we got into editing.
Each of these instances was to let the audience know that a specific character was learning something that the audience already knew, or one character telling another to do something, which they then proceeded to do.
So now I know that kind of stuff is completely unneccesary.
June 7th, 2009 at 3:28 am
“Audiences don’t go to movies to read.”
Good thing they’re remaking CACHE, then!