Formatting Action Scenes

[fedorable1]

How might you recommend writing out long battle scenes in a screenplay? For example, hundreds of WWII soldiers storm a beach for a 2-3 minute push to the enemy bunker. Would you write each shot, or put something like "BATTLE - They exchance gunfire for some time," etc?

[whistlelock]

Standard action lines should do, and if it changes location remembe to use a slug line. If you move back and forth to the same spots a lot, you can move to mini slugs to keep it a fast read.

Just be careful to not write long and expansive battle scenes. Movies are stories, and stories are about the personal conflicts between people.

the battles should have emotional meaning to the characters and to the audience.

And keep'em short.

[dpaterso]

You've already looked at the Saving Private Ryan screenplay?

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Saving-Private-Ryan.html

The formatting's off, whoever uploaded the softcopy turned mini-slugs into character names, and turned character names into action lines, but the execution is clear enough.

-Derek