Script Supervision for New Cinema

This book is a guide to the craft of script supervising. It will include both practical instruction and examples that explain the skills needed to work as a professional script supervisor. It will also contain stories from my many years on extraordinary film sets that will bring those examples to life.

The author will walk the reader through the process of becoming and working as a script supervisor. Included will be the basic skills such as how to breakdown a script, taking notes on set, matching, cheating, screen direction, and what the director, actors and editor expect from a script supervisor. The book will also include many of the more subtle but just as important skills, how to get a job, how to tell what is important in a script and on set, how to get along with the cast and crew, and how not to get overwhelmed when there is too much information to process.

Our basic job as script supervisors is to understand and record the most essential elements of the film. In the past, we were often looked upon as secretaries. Things have changed and now we are usually thought of more like executive assistants, true filmmakers, a director's backup and secret weapon. This change has come at the same time and in connection with a new film language. Post-modernist filmmaking is changing the grammar of the film and of course rules that we script supervisors used to champion. When it is no longer forbidden to cross the 180 line, our job is now to know what it means to cross the 180 line. Or to mix frame sizes, jump time or any of the poetic leaps that many of our contemporary filmmakers are now taking.

There hasn't been a 'how-to' book about script supervising since this change has happened. This will be the first to address and explore the dynamics of this new filmmaking.