colour grading your scripts - the basics

So you're wondering how do you keep track of all your new revisions especially when your project is in the works? You've heard a line in rehearsal you don't particularly like, or a scene doesn't seem to flow properly with the rest of the story. So how do you edit this out without getting your first and second/ third/ fourth drafts mixed up?

There have been many tried and tested ways the industry have attempted to organise those thousands of re drafted pages, however they have settled on a very colourful solution.

The WGAW who sound very big and scary ( AKA The Writers Guild Of America West) have come up with an official code of draft organisation by colour. This is simply to keep track of what is newly edited into the script.

Every time a change is made to the official script ( Production White/ Unrevised Copy) or to a projects schedule documents, the wonderful people in the script room peddling behind the scenes in production prints the changes on different colour paper. This is supposed to make life easier for everyone reading the script or production doc. Most importantly the colour draft system is for the script supervisor, who will know which pages have been revised and which version they are reading (for example the first second third or fourth draft) just based on the colour of the paper. Pretty cool huh?

the script is treated the same as any other production document

The same standard applies to call sheets. This is a shot list schedule created by the assistant director given to the cast and crew telling them where to report to each day of filming. The standard also includes one liner schedules. This is just a fancy term for a shorter version of the shooting schedule where a small amount of information about cast or location has been taken out or to use the official term ( "omitted" )

how do i use the colour grading standard in my script?

The WGA Colour Grade standard is graded as follows:

0.1. WHITE DRAFT- ORIGINAL (UNREVISED)

1. BLUE- FIRST DRAFT

2. PINK- SECOND DRAFT

3. YELLOW- THIRD DRAFT

4. GREEN- FOURTH DRAFT

5. GOLDENROD- FIFTH DRAFT

6. BUFF- SIXTH DRAFT

7. SALMON - SEVENTH DRAFT

8. CHERRY - EIGHTH DRAFT

Most productions don't reach the cherry draft and it can be incredibly difficult to source salmon and cherry coloured paper.

PLEASE NOTE: After the Cherry Draft script revisions will revert back to the first colour or blue draft. However this time the revisions will be named as second or third rev from the blue point or first edit for example ( Second Blue Rev, Third Blue Rev)

Personally once I reach a Goldenrod revision I revert back to the top from this point on and it is still widely accepted that you can do this. It is a personal preference and depends if you have the super powered research ability to find Salmon, Buff or Cherry coloured paper.

label your colour drafts to save you time and stress

It is EXTREMELY important to label each draft in bold on the front of the script paired with the date of when it was edited next to it in the BOTTOM LEFT HAND CORNER Of YOUR TITLE PAGE. For example you can label them like this

• BLUE REV- 31/05/19
• PINK REV- 1/06/19

Hopefully this is making sense so far. You still with me? Good.

When I first started writing to this standard I felt like a real fish out of water. I got my drafts wrong and ended up in an avalanche of multicoloured re draft pages wondering at what point I'd gone wrong or if I was in fact colour blind ( Which would explain a lot). However after a while and many rainbow coloured ideas had been filtered, everything started making sense and my actors also found this process extremely helpful at our rehearsals.

the difference between a shooting script and a draft script

Now just to remind you with this system it is primarily used for shooting scripts ( When the script is currently being made) and applies to FILM, TV and RADIO. You can use it to keep up to date in your own writing time to clearly see whereabouts you are in your re drafting process. Be warned, do read the submission guidelines before including your drafting labels in any professional submission and all final scripts should be submitted on white paper. You shouldn't submit any unneeded information or pages for a spec script. If you submit your script any other way this could get your script shipped right back to you if the company happens to be old school and a little mean.

I hope this has been helpful and if you have any further questions please ask me all about it by pressing the feedback button