THREAD: Was commenting on @nevslin's thread (Follow him! He does great twitter!) and somehow wound up talking up small things (fonts, etc.) that execs/reps fixate on. What's my fixation? Time of Day in sluglines. Wanted to do a quick thread on what is often done wrong. 1/

For the purposes of clarity, when I say Time of Day in sluglines, I mean the DAY part in:

INT. JOHN'S HOUSE - DAY

2/

I would say the ones I see used badly most often are:

MOMENTS LATER
LATER
CONTINUOUS
SAME

These are almost always used incorrectly. And you really don't need to use them that much. They're for specific occasions only. What are those occasions?
3/

Let's start off with MOMENTS LATER. I've seen some people use this for ALMOST EVERY SCENE IN THEIR SCRIPT! Please don't be that person!

4/

MOMENTS LATER should only be used when you cut into THE SAME LOCATION as the previous scene, but it's a few moments later. It's to showcase that there has been a brief jump in time.

THAT'S IT

5/

To clarify, if a character goes from INT. RESTAURANT to EXT. RESTAURANT, it's not MOMENTS LATER! They've gone from DAY to DAY (or whatever the time of day is.)

But, you say, it IS moments later. Yes, but we ASSUME that. Because time moves (normally) linearly in scripts. 6/

This is even more true with LATER. Which I also see used ALL THE TIME in scripts. To which I'd say, yes, in a linear script, every scene is LATER. That is how time works. The moment that I'm writing this tweet is later than when I wrote the previous tweet. That's a given. 7/

For LATER, the proper use is the same as MOMENTS LATER -- it's to show the passage of time in the same location in back-to-back scenes. Often, a larger time jump than "moments later."

ie. John works on his tweets >> LATER John is reading the responses to those tweets. 8/

It doesn't work in this version:

John works on his tweets >>> Ian is writing his script >>> John is reading the responses to his tweets.

Because when we come back to me, it's ASSUMED to be later. That's how the passage of time (and cutting from locations) normally works.

9/

LATER is used to clarify that there has been a jump in time (which you'll probably also indicate in the description.) You can use HOURS LATER or MINUTES if you want to be more precise.

That is the only time you need to use it.

10/

I had a client use LATER for almost every scene in their script. Reading it, I had no idea what time of day (or even what day) any scene was in the script. Was super confusing.

You don't need to use it very much!

11/

Besides when/if your script goes into pre-production, first question the line producer will ask is -- what time of day are all these scenes? Because they need to know what time of day to shoot them (or make it appear to be.) 12/

CONTINUOUS. Whoa boy. Here is a link to one of the most iconic shots in cinema history. This is one of the only times that you should use CONTINUOUS as the TIME OF DAY. 13/

It's all one continuous shot, right? That's when you use it. When a character is moving from one scene to another in a CONTINUOUS shot -- hence the descriptor. That's it! And unless you're writing BIRDMAN, you're probably not doing that very much. 14/

SAME. Oookay. So SAME is used correctly more rarely than anything else here.

First, here's what SAME is not. SAME isn't the same time of day as the last scene. That's silly. It requires me to go back and figure out what time of day the last scene was. Way too much work. 15/

You know on the TV show 24, when they break into separate boxes and show different characters doing things at the same time? There's also a movie from 2000 called TIMECODE that's like that the whole film. 16/

Those are the ONLY times that you need to use SAME. When it is the EXACT SAME MOMENT. I don't think I've ever actually seen a script where it was used properly. Maybe once or twice, but it didn't stick in my mind. 17/

So what should you do for Time of Day? Honestly, NIGHT or DAY works perfectly fine.

You can get fancier with MORNING, MIDNIGHT, DUSK, DAWN, and so on. But unless the scene requires it specifically, you really don't need to do so very often. The simpler the better! 18/

Hope that's helpful for everyone and, as with my thread about revision mode/PDFS/etc., hopefully, it results in fewer scripts sent my way that are riddled with SAME and CONTINUOUS! END