Okay, so I said I would have a decision as of today, on whether to hire union actors, class mates or experienced crew. After looking at several websites for the duration of the last couple days, I have concluded that I can make no serious decisions before the BREAKDOWN OF THE SCREENPLAY is finished and a proper schedual has been made. I have finished the 5th draft of the screenplay, and am currently breaking it down.
For those of you who don't know what a script break down is (warning you, i'm still learning myself.) It consists of seperating every working element.
From locations,props and characters to dialog, wardrobe and special effects. After doing this you can kind of estimate a budget range and put together a production board(which will help you devise your shooting schedual and such.) Lets say you want to break down your screenplay. There are two diferent ways to go about doing this. The first option is to steal your younger siblings colored markers and pencils and start coloring up your screenplay using a set of conventions as I have outlined below. The second is further defined later. The color coding system seems to vary, but as of right now, this seems to be what most people are using.
Day Ext - Yellow
Night Ext - Green
Day Int - White
Night Int - Blue
Cast - Red
Stunts - Orange
Extras/Silent bits - Yellow
Extras/Atmostphere - Green
Special Effects - Blue
Props - Purple
Vehicals/Animals - Pink
Wardrobe - Circle
Make Up - Asterisk*
Sound Effects - Music - Brown
Special Equipment - Box
Production Notes - Underline
For the record, this is just one example and I have pretty much copied from this script break downsheet:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Script_Breakdown_Sheet.pdf
The other possible way you can break down your screenplay is downloading a program that does it for you. Now, progs such as EP Scheduling, Movie Magic and Sun Frog Film Scheduling are all fine and dandy.. but i'm positive that neither you nor I want to shell out 300 bucks for a program. Especially if your a poor student such as myself. After two days of searching however, I have found that a screenwriting program called Celtx actually helpfully allows you to not only markup your screenplay, but compiles the information into your break down.(AND IT'S FLIPPIN FREE!) All you have to do is point and click. There are several other options that i'll leave for you to figure out yourself.
The website for Celtx is http://www.celtx.com/download.html.
Knock yourself out.
