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](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/hollywood-standard). So I would number the scenes…

68
A69 (the scene you moved)
69
70 OMIT“OMIT” or “OMITTED”. Either is okay. (where the scene used to be)

With rare exception,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. 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.]