How To Break Down a Film Script
You can never have too much pre-production when working on a film. Never. It's a vital part of the the filmmaking process, and without proper planning even a movie with the best script, cast, and crew in the world is going to fail miserably.
Breaking down the script and creating breakdown sheets are one of the main parts of pre-production. Breakdown sheets condense the production elements of each scene into a grid so that they can be quickly and easily referenced for budgeting and scheduling purposes.
While it sounds complicated, breaking down a script is actually a fairly easy process. Software such as Movie Magic Scheduling exists to make it more efficient, but breakdowns can be done manually through a simple set of steps.
To break down a script, you will need:
A paper copy of the most recent version of your script. (In this example, I'm using the original script for A Blue Mug.)
Writing utensils in orange, black, green, brown, pink, purple, yellow, red, and blue, plus a plain pen or pencil. I use markers for the colors. (And a pink colored pencil because the package didn't come with a pink marker. Lame.) You could use highlighters or colored pencils, whatever you have on hand.
Printed copies of breakdown sheets. I have a giant stack of them left over from a production I did over the summer, but I would use this template if I needed to print out more.
Access to some type of word processing software + that same template.
Step 1: Read the script thoroughly. It helps to be familiar with the content so you can focus on the details when you start highlighting.
Number the scenes in the script, if they aren't already numbered. Some will be, some will not. This one technically was, because when I wrote and formatted the script I knew I would be the one breaking it down so I made things easier on myself. However, my printer decided it didn't want to print the numbers properly so I had to number the scenes anyway.
What constitutes as a new scene? Anytime there's a new slug line. I.e., "EXT. SUBURBAN HOUSE - EVENING" or "INT. POLICE DEPARTMENT HALLWAY - MORNING". Every slug line should be accompanied by a number, even if the scene it precedes is only a few lines long.
Break every page of the script into 8ths. One page is 8/8ths of a page, and every scene on the page takes up a certain portion of those 8/8ths. So if a scene takes up half the page, it's 4/8ths, but if it takes up a tiny portion of the page it's 1/8th. It depends on how much space each scene takes up.
This is done to accurately estimate how long a scene will run and how long it will take to shoot. For example, you should shoot seven scenes in a day, if they were all 2/8ths of a page and didn't have any production elements that would consume a lot of time on set. However, some scenes may run longer than a page so they could be, for example, 2 and 3/8th pages. In this case, you could perhaps only shoot two scenes in a day. Scheduling relies on a combination of page count and knowledge of production elements, which is why breakdown sheets are so important.
To break the script into 8ths, draw lines between each scene as you see in the picture. Then, look at how much space each scene is taking up and write the page count in 8ths next to each scene. This can be done by either your own estimation, or you can use a ruler.
If you have a scene longer than one page, or a scene that spills over onto two pages, count how many 8ths it is total (you may have to use a mixed number such as 1 and 5/8) and put that at the beginning of the scene. As you can see on the page above, scene 5 spills over onto the next page of the script. There are 2/8ths on this page and 4/8ths on the next, so I put 6/8ths at the top of the scene, in addition to marking 2/8ths and 4/8ths on the pages it occupies.
I consider this to be the most fun part of the breakdown. You get to make everything colorful.
Colors and certain symbols have special meanings in a breakdown script, and having everything highlighted makes it easier to transfer all the needed information to your breakdown sheets. The meanings of the colors and symbols are:
Red - Cast. Any characters with speaking roles in the scene.
Orange - Stunts. Any intense physical action.
Yellow - Extras/silent bits. Any characters that serve a specific purpose in the scene, but have no speaking roles.
Green - Extras/atmosphere. Any characters that exist only to fill in the background of the scene, like pedestrians or partygoers.
Blue - SFX. Anything in the script that requires special effects, either practical or visual.
Purple - Props. Any prop specifically mentioned in the script.
Pink - Vehicles/animals. Any vehicle or animal specifically mentioned in the script.
Circle - Wardrobe. Any wardrobe specifications detailed in the script.
Asterisk - Hair/makeup. Any hair or makeup directions specified in the script.
Brown - Sound effects/music. Anything that requires a specific sound effect or music cue within the scene.
Box - Special equipment. Anything in the script that would require equipment that might not normally be on set, such as a Steadicam, a fog machine, etc.
Go through your script page by page and mark any of these categories with their proper color or symbol. Each individual item only needs to be marked once per scene, so you don't need to mark the main character's name in red every time they speak - only the first time the speak in each scene.
You may want to go through the script once with each individual color or symbol, just to make sure you don't miss anything important.
Now you transfer all that information onto your breakdown sheets. I prefer to do handwritten sheets first, and then transcribe them into a digital format, but you can go straight to digital if you prefer.
Breakdown sheets are made by labeling things and putting them in boxes, which makes them every neat freak's dream. The information at the top - title, scene number, date, etc. - is all self-explanatory. Then you fill in the grid with the items you already marked in your script.
There is one extra category on the grid, which is production notes. This is anything that doesn't fit into one of the other categories, but it still relevant information that the crew needs to be aware of. For example, on this scene I put down that we needed to go over blocking with the cast beforehand, because I knew the scene would be a one-take Steadicam shot and would require a lot of coordination in order to work. This takes time on set, so I had to make sure it was marked down so we could schedule the shoot accordingly.
Again, I prefer to handwrite all my breakdown sheets before I make a digital copy to send to the crew, but that's preference. Once the digital copy of the breakdown sheets is complete with all the information from the script, you're done with the script breakdown! That is...until the script gets revised, and you have to do the first 4 steps all over again and tweak the details in the 5th.
But hey, like I said, breakdowns are every neat freak's dream. I find them fun, so redoing a few things doesn't seem like a big hassle to me. Hopefully this post simplified the process for you and you'll think the same way.
