Page One: “Minority Report” (2002)

Screenplay by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen, short story by Philip K. Dick

The movie version of the opening:

Let’s talk two things: Font and capitalization.

The standard font for a screenplay is the Courier font, 12-point size, single-spaced. It is a monospaced font, meaning that every letter is given an equal amount of horizontal spacing. This is important to give an accurate appraisal of page count to screen time (typically, one page = one minute).

Clearly, the font used in the script for Minority Report is not Courier 12. Evidently, whatever font it is, it worked for director Steven Spielberg, so there’s that. My recommendation: Stick to Courier 12. It’s what script readers and development execs expect.

With regard to capitalization, there is no screenwriting rule on when or not to cap words in scene description. Historically, production drafts would capitalize words to alert the production team of a sound effect or visual effect. In the old days, character names were routinely capitalized every time they were used to let the actors know the scene involved them.

Once the spec script era emerged in the 80s and 90s, screenwriters began to use capitalization more strategically. We stopped capping character names except when they were introduced. Why? We wanted to save caps for special narrative elements like important visuals or sounds.

My advice: Be judicious in your use of capitalization. Too much and it becomes distracting. Only use caps when you really want to emphasize something of significance in a scene.

But again, there’s no rule. You can do what you want. Yet another reason to read scripts by contemporary screenwriters. Track how they use capitalization. Over time, you will develop your own sense of when or when not to use caps.

Page One is a daily Go Into The Story series featuring the first page of notable movie scripts from the classic era to contemporary times. Comparing them is an excellent way to study a variety of writing styles and see how professional writers start a story.

For more Page One posts, go here.

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