Scene breakdown for Y9, 10 and 11 Media BTEC students

Ladies and gentlemen,

In an effort to help you along with the scene breakdown of your treatment, please look below for a scene I have created here. It contains all the elements you should be putting into each of your scenes when you break the treatment down into scenes.

1.     INT.       CLASSROOM.     DAY.

Mr Smith, a science teacher, stands at a desk, frowning and staring down at Billy Jones. Billy, a small, nervous-looking schoolboy, sits and stares up at Mr Smith with a look of fear.

Mr Smith shouts at Billy for not doing his homework and for not paying attention. Billy is in a detention for not doing his work. Billy tries to tell the teacher that he did do his homework but that the school bully, Bruiser Barnes, took it and tore it up, but Mr Smith does not believe him. Billy closes his eyes and puts his head on the desk as the teacher continues his rant.

CUT TO:

Each scene needs to be laid out like this. You will need a scene heading with the scene number, whether the scene is inside (INT) or outside (EXT), the location and the time of day.

Next you need to write a brief description of how the scene starts in italics (the diagonal writing like this.) This description should contain what the audience would see at the start of the scene, the characters they would see and what they are doing as the scene begins.

After this you need to write a brief description of what happens in the scene. Avoid dialogue if possible for now; once you have planned out the whole treatment you may find you have to cut scenes if it is too long so don't waste your time writing dialogue yet.

End your scene with either CUT TO: or FADE TO: according to how you would like to reach the next scene.

Read this carefully and use it to structure all the scenes for your treatment. Remember you need a separate scene for every location change in your treatment.