Screenwriting

I end the week of the 7 Day Blogging Challenge for Bloggers where I began: on Markup.

John August is a screenwriter who also writes software for writing and reading screenplays. There's a lot of stuff on his site (johnaugust.com) for the screenwriter geek, but I take one small bit of CSS code as an example. This code can be placed in a Blogger blog template (before </head>):


/* .screenbox: from http://johnaugust.com/2004/screenbox */
.screenbox {
    list-style: none;
    width: 420px;
    padding: 5px 14px;
}
.screenbox li { font: 12px/14px Courier, fixed; }
.sceneheader, .action, .character { padding-top: 1.5ex; }
.action { padding-right: 5%; }
.character { margin-left: 40%; padding-top: 2.0em;}
.dialogue { margin-left: 10%; padding-right: 10%; }
.parenthetical { margin-left: 32%; padding-right: 30%; }
.transition { padding-top: 3ex; margin-left: 65%; padding-bottom: 1.5ex; }


It is slightly modified from the original code, as I have played with it a bit. An example:


<code style="color: black;">
<ul class="screenbox">
<li class="sceneheader">EXT. FOREST / ELSEWHERE – DAY</li>
<li class="parentherical">
(Lighting on Susan.)</li>
<li class="action">Susan is on a cell-phone call. She smiles at Melissa, who walks by with two cups of coffee.</li>
<li class="character">SUSAN (V.O.)</li>
<li class="dialogue">Right now, this is probably our top pilot. But things change.</li>
</ul>
</code>


results in

• EXT. FOREST / ELSEWHERE – DAY
• 
  (Lighting on Susan.)
• Susan is on a cell-phone call. She smiles at Melissa, who walks by with two cups of coffee.
• SUSAN (V.O.)
• Right now, this is probably our top pilot. But things change.

There's a lot more on his site and I'm only a dabbler so far in screenwriting, but the above example gives an indication of how CSS is used to make screenplays look right.



This post is the seventh in a series of seven for the 7 Day Blogging Challenge for Bloggers from +Jenson Taylor.