Script Breakdown

This weekend, I'm trying to finish an initial breakdown of the script for In the Light of Day. As a preliminary step to scheduling and budgeting, a script breakdown means going through the script and identifying the locations, characters, props, etc, for each scene.

Because the script jumps around a bit, I'm actually distinguishing a scene as written in the script from a "story scene". I'm calling it a story scene if it's a single sequence of action in one location, even if it's non-contiguous in the script. The important point being that we almost certainly want to film a story scene in one go for continuity.

So the main relationships I'm dealing with are the many-to-one from script scene to story scene and the many-to-one from story scene to story location. (Again, I say "story location" because the same physical location may act for multiple locations in the story and I'm just focused on the locations in the story at this stage.)

Once that's done, the many-to-many relationship between characters and scenes can be added. And then from this, we can see who is needed in what locations for how long. And thus begins the process of scheduling (which I'll talk about when we get to it)

I have 98 script scenes and will report shortly on how many story scenes and story locations that corresponds to.

Incidentally, I'm doing all this in a home-grown Django app I'm building as I go along. Mostly just working in the admin console at the moment.

UPDATE (2008-02-17): After an initial pass, there are 75 story scenes and 24 story locations.