Renumbering when moving a scene

Let’s say you are doing revisions and are dealing with scene numbers, and a scene gets moved up/down. How do you format the scene number?

Say scene 70 moves up in front of scene 69. Do the numbers read: 68, 70, 69? Or: 68, 68A, 69, 70 OMITTED.

Technically the scene still exists, i.e. was not omitted. What to do?

— Johnny

The second form is correct, though my AD’s prefer to use the letter before a scene number, for reasons I explained in an earlier post. So I would number the scenes…

68
A69 (the scene you moved)
69
70 OMIT¹ (where the scene used to be)

With rare exception,² you always maintain scene number continuity. If you’re pretty far into pre-production, it may be helpful to include a note either with the script revision or on the page itself to point out the change, so a harried production designer (for example) doesn’t look at the “OMIT” and suddenly stop construction on a needed set.

The “OMIT” is a good place to put such a note:

70 OMIT [This scene is now A69.]

1. “OMIT” or “OMITTED”. Either is okay. ↩
2. One exception was The Nines, due to some complicated time-and-reality issues, which made normal sequencing too confusing. When revisiting an earlier scene, we’d put an X in front of the scene number. So, X48 was a version of scene 48. ↩