1.Camera direction: this is the top tell for novice screenwriters.
I'm not just a writer, it proclaims.
I'm a director too. An auteur. Maybe you are, dear Screenwriter, maybe not. You really should master one filmmaking discipline before taking on another. Write first, direct later. Let's hoover the noob stink off these pages.
INT. LABORATORY - NIGHT
VIALS OF LIQUID
Straw-colored, standing at attention in a neat row on a matte-black benchtop in this sterile white lab.
This is the formatting technique pros use for framing shots without saying you're framing a shot. We reduced 37 words down to 22. The sentence about rubbing alcohol was cute, but doesn't gel with this close-up. 'Sterile' gets the job done. Describing smells on the page instead of ascribing them to things in the scene might help the production designer dial in the look and feel, but there are ways to imply smells through action and dialogue.
And is the obsession with color important here? Straw-colored vials. Black benchtop. White lab. Do these colors give the scene more meaning? I don't know. If they don't, save your words. It's immaterial here because it's a one-line sentence. We're not sacrificing whitespace. We can verbally dance like there's no overflow.
Words on the page must do more than describe, more than make you see: they have to make you feel something. Do we want the reader to feel the coldness of the lab?
INT. LABORATORY - NIGHT
VIALS OF LIQUID
bathed in a rolling, frigid mist, racked in a neat row on a sterile benchtop. Condensation clings to the glass like icy persperation.
Now we're feeling the chill.
2.Sherry's V.O. -- yes, it's 'V.O.' and not 'V/O' -- feels too verbose. Overwritten. Trim time:
SHERRY (V.O.)
'Exposure' is one of those words where context matters.
Or a much simpler:
SHERRY (V.O.)
'Exposure' can mean different things.
3.Sticking with our unobtrusive technique for directing without directing, we have our first moment of action:
A PIPETTE
dips into the shallow neck of the rightmost vial. Siphons off its contents.
4.Some minor simplification to make it land quicker:
SHERRY (V.O.)
In epidemiology, it means having contact with a pathogen, like a virus or a bacteria.
5.You know the drill: lose the camera direction by putting the reader where we need to be.
A PETRI DISH
Clumps of propagated red cells feast on the gelatinous nutrient base.
6.SHERRY
in white lab coat, her face hidden by bulky goggles, manipulates the pipette.
Statements like 'standing at the counter' are completely dispensable. Don't clog the flow with minutia. Let the obvious things go unsaid.
7.Here's where I make my first sequencing edit to the scene flow. Now that we're using mini sluglines to perform our camera directions, we have the following suggested shot flow:
1. CLOSE on the vials
2. The PIPETTE siphoning the contents of rightmost vial
3. The waiting PETRI DISH
4. SHERRY
5. The PETRI DISH and the PIPETTE releasing the collected serum
I think the SHERRY reveal can wait til after what is now Shot 5. And no need to foreshadow the petri dish. Let's keep the serum collection/release continuous:
1. CLOSE on the vials
2. The PIPETTE siphoning the content of rightmost vial
3. The PETRI DISH and the PIPETTE releasing the collected serum
4. SHERRY
That way we stay in close-ups until we go wide to reveal Sherry at the bench.
8.Awkward formatting fumble here with SHERRY's name slugging. Seems there was an action line deleted or something? I'm team "Keep your formatting simple and uncluttered if it's not a shooting script." I like to see no CONT'Ds except for page breaks or where confusion might creep in. It's overused here and visually distracting.
9.Simplifying:
SHERRY (V.O.)
It's thought that facing your fear over and over makes it less frightening over time.
There's a case to be made that Sherry, a scientist, would monologue with technical words like 'phobia.' I have no strong objection to restoring it in place of 'fear.' But the phrase 'facing your fear' sends the message faster than 'encountering the object of a phobia.'
10.In my revised scene flow, this is Sherry's introduction. Before that we were CLOSE ON the vial serum and the pipette doing the extraction. Now, let's finish that shot sequence.
A PETRI DISH
Clumps of propagated red cells feast on the gelatinous nutrient base. The PIPETTE enters and squirts its seminal deposit onto the agar.
SHERRY
in latex gloves and white lab coat, her face hidden by bulky goggles, discards the pipette then carefully moves the petri dish to a compact incubator.
See how we accomplish the same stage direction without intricate actor blocking on the page? No more 'takes a few steps to the right...' No more 'opens the door of a...'.
Putting everything together, here's the revised first page:
