British Social Realism Shooting Script

British Social Realism Shooting Script

A shooting script is similar to a storyboard, it tells you all the events in the order of which they happen and what happens in each shot. It also gives you information on the sounds, actions that will happen, actors and dialogue as well as setting/props that are used. The only difference is that there the emphasis of a shooting script is done through text and not through a illustrated image. The reason it includes all of these things is so that the director can follow a general idea of what the writer and director wanted to show, it is much quicker as well as there are no images. A shooting script will also include shot types, stating whether it is a close up or long shit and whether it is a high or low angle and will tell you in text exactly what each of the camera movements are.

From using a shooting script I have learned that it is much more informative in terms of what happens in each shot as it is all written down, however it is much harder to visualise because a lack of images, every persons view on it will be slightly different. It also is more likely to lead to confusion and missing things out as it is all written in paragraphs. When you have a storyboard though the story is never as clear as it is meant to just get each shot right along with basic actions in the shot, a shooting script on the other hand is meant for everyone to be able to read to understand the story as it is written down with all the details, very much unlike a storyboard.

Our attempt at reading and recording from a Shooting Script



From our attempt we had a variety of strengths and weaknesses, firstly the strengths, we were able to easily recreate all the different actions and the spoken dialogue as it was all scripted in chronological order whereas on a storyboard there would have to have been a separate script to show speech and would require a director to be watching at all times. We also managed to find that they are quite easy to read as they are very much like a script, we managed to get a draft recorded within the lesson and complete it. 

On the other hand we did have some issues with it, for example it is much more likely for a mistake to go unnoticed in a shooting script and led to confusion about the characters in the draft exercise, we also found that we weren't able to stay focused at all times when creating this as we kept laughing.