Screenwriting, Revisions & Locked Scene Numbers

We imported a screenplay in Episode 1 and have been working off it ever since. Now we go back to it, because the Script Editor is not just a viewer.

You can write in it, and what you write reaches the rest of the production on its own. We will add a scene and watch its strip appear on the board, look at starting a script from nothing, and then do the two things that matter once you are shooting: marking a revision, and locking your scene numbers.

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Step 1: Write a Scene Straight Into the Editor

1. Click Script in the top navigation bar.
2. Select Script Editor in the left sidebar.

This is a full screenplay editor, so you can type directly into the page.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the script, past Scene 30, and press Enter for a new line.
4. In the toolbar, open the element type dropdown and choose Scene Heading.
5. Type: EXT. CORNER SHOP - NIGHT

FilmBase formats it as a slugline and numbers it 31, and a thirty-first entry appears in the scenes panel.

6. Now go to Schedule → Stripboards.

The strip is already there. A scene written here gets a strip on every scenario in the block, so the board cannot fall behind the script.

That matters most working the other way round. If you are shooting a commercial or a music video and there is no screenplay to import, you do not need one. Open the editor, type your scenes in, and you get the same strips, the same breakdown, and the same call sheets a feature would.

The rest of the toolbar

• New Script starts one from nothing — give it a title and a writer and you have an empty script to work in.

Try that on a new block rather than over the top of Dead Tired. Go to Production Schedule, click Add Lane, call it Block 2, and switch on Shooting Block. A new block has no script attached yet, so select it in the block selector and the editor opens empty, ready to write into.

That is the commercial and music video case again: one project can hold several blocks, each with its own script and its own board, so a company shooting three spots keeps them together rather than in three separate projects.

• Title Page opens a WYSIWYG editor for the front page, so the script reads properly when somebody opens it.
• Export takes the whole script out as PDF to send round, or FDX if somebody needs it back in Final Draft.

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Step 2: Mark a Revision and Lock Your Scene Numbers

1. Back in the editor, put your cursor at the end of that new slugline and press Enter.
2. Set the element type to Action and type: Maya locks the shop door. The lights go out.

Once you are shooting, that is a revision, and everyone holding a script has to know what moved.

3. Open the revision colour dropdown. You get the standard sequence: White for the original, then Blue, Pink, Yellow, Green, Goldenrod, Buff, Salmon, Cherry, Tan, Grey, Ivory. Pick Blue — this is our first revision.
4. Leave your cursor in the line you just wrote and click the asterisk button. That marks the paragraph as revised in the current draft, so a reader can find what changed without comparing two scripts side by side.
5. Click the padlock button. It lights up, and the tooltip reads “Scene numbers locked — new scenes get suffixes (e.g. 2A). Click to unlock.”

This is the one that matters most. Everything you have built points at scene numbers: your strips, your Day out of Days, your call sheets, and your sides all name scenes by number. A script that renumbers itself the moment somebody inserts a scene would quietly invalidate all of it.

Locked, an inserted scene becomes 2A instead, and every number already in circulation still means what it meant. Do this before pages go out to a crew.

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Your script is editable, your first revision is marked in blue, and your scene numbers are locked so nothing downstream comes loose. Next we build shotlists and storyboards off it.