: How to script two scenes happening simultaneously? I am writing a movie where a character has an interview with a news reporter. The scenes segues into a character profile of the interviewee

You're asking two things (due to Cyn's title change?):

How to make scenes appear to happen continuously
And how to make them appear as if happening in parallel/simultaneously

Continuously

I'm not a scriptwriter, but I think the general impression is that scene changes in a manuscript always happens continuously unless you do a "Fade to black"...

After all, what else would the camera be up to, if not going over to the next scene the moment the previous one ends? ;)

Simultaneously

I interpret "simultaneously" as being in parallel, in the chronological timeline (i.e. in the lives of the characters).

From the technical script writing POV; I don't know. I don't think there is any way other than what I'm about to suggest to do it though...

You use events and visual clues that these two scenes are happening at the same time.

You could have a "global" event (e.g. a bomb going off) and then show different plots leading up to or expanding from that event, thus indicating that they are happening in parallel.

"Pulp Fiction" is an example. "Lost Boy", episode 11 of season 2 of "Colony" is another very interesting example.

All seasons of "24" has the premise that many different threads are unfolding in parallel during the 24 hours of a season. This is achieved by showing the characters "mid-action" pursuing their goals and ambitions throughout an episode.

An important aspect of "24" is that each season is bracketed by some significant event that affects all characters. We know that things are in essence happening at the same time because everyone is either busy catching the terrorists, or setting off (more?) bombs.

One technical gimmick present in "24" is to use split screens. However, "24" only uses them very briefly, and only as an effect to underline the parallelism of the show.

The point is, you mostly do parallelism by writing the manuscript and what happens in the story in such a way that it becomes obvious it is happening in parallel, scene by scene.

In fact, you could say parallelism is just an extreme example of "chronological timeline" management in a script.

All my examples are action-oriented, but I think that's just my preference. It shouldn't be hard (or yeah it definitely is) to do it in any other genre as well, I'm just lost for good examples...

---

(0)