All right, you're ready to begin.
You need a story. Since this would be your first attempt, a small story will do. (Remember, War and Peace this ain't.) Let's use, as an example, a simple story.
Geeky-looking man walks up to pretty girl crying on a bus bench. He asks what's wrong, and she says her dog was stolen.
Geeky-looking man ducks into nearby phone booth; with a flash of light, he becomes GeekyHero. GeekyHero dashes off at super speed to find the dog.
A disreputable-looking character sits nearby holding a dog. GeekyHero sails in, cold cocks the disreputable looking man, and takes the dog.
Back at the bus bench, GeekyHero hands the dog to the girl, expecting to be made much of for his heroics. She looks at him and says, "This isn't my dog."
GeekyHero faints.
See? That wasn't so hard... which is why I shot this one myself about thirty years ago. (The footage is still around here somewhere...)
I was going to say "for the moment, we won't bother with proper script format"; but if I do that, then you might get into bad habits that would take much more time and effort to break, and replace with the right ones. So we'll give you the right habits now.
Since I'm assuming you are impecunious student types, or maybe just cheap (like me), there are places where you can get free script formatting software. I'm putting in a partial list here; places like ScriptNurse Screenwriting Site, Celtx Production Software , Cinergy Script Editor, Page2Stage Screenwriting Software, and The DV Cafe - Free Downloads for Filmmakers have downloads you can get. And if you Google® "screenwriting", you'll get an absolute overload of sites to search. (Great time wasters.)
So, once you have your script in proper format, you have to do what they call a "breakdown".
(And, no, you aren't having an impairment of mental function, nor are you having mechanical problems. This refers to listing all the cast and elements [costumes, props, locations, special effects, special make up, and the like] that you need to shoot this epic.)
This is an approximate breakdown of what you'd need:
- Scene One - girl on bus bench crying.
- Scene Two - Geek turns into GeekyHero, and runs off.
- Scene Three - Disreputable-looking man has a dog; GeekyHero punches him out, takes dog.
- Scene Four - GeekyHero hands dog to girl; she says "Not my dog"; he faints.
- Cast Members: Girl, Geek, Disreputable Looking Man (DLM).
- Costuming: GeekyHero Costume (in addition to regular clothing).
- Props: Dog, Handkerchief/tissues (depending on the preference of the actress).
- Locations: Bus Bench, Phone Booth, another location where DLM sits.
The next part of preproduction is figuring out how many pages of script are shot per scene. (This is a lot more important for a 120-page script than a 12-page one... )
If you have your script to the point where it's done, and you don't expect to make any more major changes, it becomes "locked". Any further changes are done on what are called "revision pages", which are printed on a different color paper and added to the copy of the script. Say Scene Four is on Page Four, and is revised to run onto a new page; the new page is not numbered Five, as you would expect, since the stuff that's already on Page Five stays there; the new page is Four-A. Additionally, if a scene is deleted, a notation with the scene number is put into the script to keep the scene numbers constant and consistent.
Confused yet?
Anyway, pages are measured in eighths. Half a page is not half a page, it's "four eighths". The script supervisor (if you have one) is supposed to keep tabs on how many scenes are shot, how many eighths each scene runs, how many takes were done, and which take the director thinks is a keeper.
By the way, you'll probably be doing this all on your own, since this is a simple project.
You need to find a location where you'll be shooting, cast the actors, which in this case might not be too difficult if you have enough friends, get the dog, costume, and camera, film, tripod (DON'T FORGET THE TRIPOD!) and batteries, and set up when you'll be doing it.
A few other things to consider, while we're talking about pre-production... Will you be paying your actors anything? Will you be feeding them? (Tip: If you're not paying them, feeding them is a really good idea; they might want to work with you again if you do.) Will you be supplying the transportation? (Do you really want to have three actors and the dog in your car with all your stuff? On the other hand, if you don't put them in your car, will they be able to get there?)
There are a lot of things to think about.
With that, we're now progressing to the Production phase.
