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Quick Tips: Setting the Stage

We’ve discussed before the importance of incorporating your locations into your writing. As the writer, you are the first location scout, production designer, and director for the movie in your head. So take the job seriously!

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist does a great job of demonstrating how location intersects with the dramatic action of your story. Not only do the sets need to represent character and different spheres of the storyline, but it also needs to be built to allow large-scale dancing numbers. The below video walks you through the Production Design process – exactly the sort of thing you should be doing in your head as you’re writing your script.

Every department in the tv/film production has something to teach the writer. Expand the information and insight you’re taking in, so that your writing can more fully utilize all that the form has to offer. Before anyone else has a shot at it, you’re doing the job of every department to assemble the movie or tv show in your head. So know what all the jobs are that you’re doing.