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Dear Reader,
If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you know that in May I graduated from Harvard with my Master’s in Creative Writing, in June I visited LA on a scouting trip, July I packed up my life and said my goodbyes, and in August I drove from Connecticut to California to start a career as a writer in the entertainment industry. Thanks to the connection of some very good friends, I had the opportunity to work on a movie set as the “Script Supervisor.”
The Script-what-now?
With glee and trepidation, I set out to research the responsibilities of a Script Supervisor, promising the 1st AD (1st Assistant Director) that, while I had never done this before, I was a fast learner. Here is what my research yielded:
The Script Supervisor is the editor’s representative on set. They make sure everything that’s in the script gets covered on the screen. This is called “coverage.” For example, if an entire dialogue scene were filmed with the camera on only one of two talkers, we would be missing the “coverage” of the second talker.
The industry has developed a system for the Script Supervisor to note this called “lining the script.” Each new scene is numbered, and each new “shot” is lettered, and it’s the Script Supervisor’s job to make sure these numbers and letters are consistent across the slate, the sound, and their own notes. They then draw a line through the script under this letter/number to indicate what was “covered” by the camera on the page, and a squiggle for what was not.
If you’re confused, so was I. I quickly set out to learn how to do this and was most nervous about accurately lining the script in the chaos of production. Once I got on set, however, I realized lining was the easiest part of the gig.
The Script Supervisor is responsible for absolutely everything on the screen: is there a boom in the frame? A reflection showing a crew member? Are the actors wearing the right costume? Do they pick up an object with the right hand? Above all, the Script Supervisor is the last stop-gap for any breaks in logic, meaning they have to be alert, and laser focused, 100% of the time the camera is rolling.
When the camera isn’t rolling, the Script Supervisor stays glued to the hip with the director. They must understand everything the director plans to execute, so they can compare it against the script and see if there is any lack of coverage. As the days went on, I learned to make “shot lists” of all the angles the director planned to get so that in the chaos of filming, when everyone was focused exclusively on their own task (which were all just as demanding) I could speak up and note that we needed coverage of a few more shots before we “flipped” the production unit.
“Flipping” entails moving the camera, moving all the lighting, and dressing the set. This can take 30-45 minutes, which means that if we miss a shot in the original setup before the flip, we’ve just lost 60-90 minutes. While of course, no one wants to waste time (and in our case we were working against the rising of the sun), everyone is focused and working extremely hard on their own job. The Script Supervisor is a bit like the brain trust for the director, the writer, and the editor: the living, speaking representative of the script inside all the moving pieces and people of production.
That’s an overview.
Day one, as the director and crew blocked out the shots they planned, I read lines as a stand-in for the lead actor (another responsibility of the Script Supervisor). Director, DP, 1st AD, 2ndAD, Grip, Gaff, and many more crew members buzzed around me, framing shots, and throwing around strange terms that went right over my head. It was a bit like going to a foreign country, listening to a new language, and being expected to speak it. Oh, and by the way, the things you say are crucial to the work everyone else is doing.
Out of the frying pan…
Needless to say, the first couple of days were exhausting, overwhelming, and exhilarating. We kicked off our production with an overnight shoot. I was extremely grateful for low lighting because every time someone identified something wrong with the shot (ex. boom in screen) I’m pretty sure I flushed red:
My job, I shoot have caught that.
(I was gratified, weeks later, to hear from a friend on the set that that shoot was a bit like Filming Bootcamp. It certainly felt that way to me.)
For the next week, I got up around 3pm, drove to set, watched the sunset, filmed through the night, watched the sunrise, drove back around 7am, went to bed, and did it all over again. We were on set 12 hours every day. My friends from college know that I do not do well if I don’t get enough sleep, but the adrenaline from driving across the country, now being in California, and finally (FINALLY!) being on a film set, swiftly switched my sleep schedule. That, and coffee. And energy drinks.
By day three I was beginning to get the hang of my responsibilities: where I should be, where I shouldn’t be, and how I could help the director, cast, and crew. A strange sort of calm settled on all of us, and I looked around to see people laughing as they got their jobs done, and the Director and DP (Director of Photography) in an artistic mind-meld as they discussed the shots and angles they wanted to get. I looked over at the 1st AD sitting next to me who was—miraculously—relaxing. He grinned and said,
“It’s all jazz, baby.”
I could not be more grateful to Charthouse Films for giving me my first opportunity to work on this film. They are an incredible group of talented people. I highly recommend following them on Instagram. Once the film is available for viewing I will point you on this newsletter to the platform to watch it. Watch the trailer here.