Shooting script

A shooting script is the version of a screenplay used during the production of a motion picture. Shooting scripts are distinct from spec scripts in that they make use of scene numbers (along with certain other formatting conventions described below), and they follow a well defined set of procedures specifying how script revisions should be implemented and circulated.

Overview

When a screenplay is approved for production, the scenes are assigned numbers which are included in the script alongside the scene headers. The numbers provide a convenient way for the various production departments to reference individual scenes. Also each individual shot within a scene is also assigned numbers. For instance Scene 1 Shot 1, 2, 3,4,5 etc.

After a shooting script has been widely circulated, page numbers are locked, and any revisions are distributed on revision pages. Thus the production office might issue a revision containing new pages 3, 9, 17 and 45. This avoids having to print and distribute an entirely new draft for every set of revisions, which would entail crew members having to transfer all their handwritten notes to a new script. If scenes on page 45 become longer, they will be continued on new pages 45A, 45B and so on; if the scenes on page 45 are all eliminated, a new page 45 will be issued with the word "OMITTED" as the absence of a page 45 might look like an error.

Shooting Script

Shooting Script is a first person narrative novel by English author Gavin Lyall, first published in 1966. The book was selected as number 99 in the Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time, a list published by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990.

Plot introduction

Keith Carr, an ex-Royal Air Force fighter pilot with combat experience in the Korean War is now living in Jamaica, where he makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights around the Caribbean in his mortgaged second-hand de Havilland Dove. After a rival pilot from his Korean War days lands a high-priced job commanding a squadron of de Havilland Vampire jet fighters for the hard-line military dictators on the nearby “Republica Libre”, Carr suddenly finds life more difficult. For some reason, the United States FBI is keeping him under surveillance. Republica Libre at first offers him a job, and then impounds his plane when he refuses – and one of his flying students ends up murdered. Carr is hired by the flamboyant movie director Walt Whitmore, who is filming an action movie on the north coast of Jamaica, and Carr is assigned to fly an old World War II vintage B-25 Mitchell medium bomber as a camera plane. However, it soon becomes apparent that Whitmore has more in mind for Carr and the decrepit bomber than just making a film. The character of Whitmore was inspired by John Wayne, with whom Lyall spent four days at a studio while Wayne was filming.