---
title: 'Screenplay Formatting 102: Advanced Techniques'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=RGDSxyLkgPU'
video_id: 'RGDSxyLkgPU'
date: 2026-09-09
duration_sec: 581
channel: 'RocketJump Film School'
---

# Screenplay Formatting 102: Advanced Techniques

> Source: [Screenplay Formatting 102: Advanced Techniques](https://youtube.com/watch?v=RGDSxyLkgPU)

## Summary

In this video, Will Campos and Mike Sessions from Rocket Jump discuss advanced screenplay formatting techniques, building on their previous tutorial. They cover dual dialogue, handling character name changes, proper use of caps and italics, music cues, and montage formatting, all with practical examples from their show Video Game High School.

### Key Points

- **Dual Dialogue** [00:42] — To show two characters speaking simultaneously, highlight both dialogue blocks and select the 'dual dialogue' option in formatting software, placing them side by side.
- **Character Name Changes** [01:07] — For characters with multiple identities, like Bruce Wayne and Batman, use the character's name as the slug line to indicate which form is present, as seen in The Dark Knight script.
- **Prose for Cinematography** [04:58] — Use descriptive prose to suggest camera shots rather than explicit directions, making the choice of shot unavoidable through language.
- **Formatting Rules** [05:39] — Caps should be reserved for character names on first introduction; overusing them for emphasis is a sign of deeper writing issues. Italics and underlines are rarely needed, except for standard literary usage.
- **Music Cues** [06:52] — Music cues should be used sparingly; if necessary, place them at the top of the scene, e.g., 'Ave Maria plays as...'.
- **Montage Formatting** [07:35] — For montages, write 'begin montage' at the start, describe the shots, use slug lines for location changes when intercutting, and end with 'end montage'.

## Transcript

Hello, I'm Will Campos. I'm the writer and co-creator of Video Game High School. I'm also a senior staff writer at Rocket Jump. Hey, I'm Mike Sessions. I'm the creative director of Rocket Jump. I'm the writer of the show here. We are here today to talk a little bit more about screenplay formatting.
There's been a lot of questions in the forums about some more advanced screenplay techniques and tips and tricks that we did not cover in the previous video. Oh God, this is all my fault! So we're kind of circling back to that topic.
So, what's that, Vernon? One of the first things we should probably talk about is dual dialogue. What do you do in a script when two characters are supposed to say something at the exact same time? So what we want to do is you'll be able to find this in pretty much any screenplay formatting software.
There's an option called dual dialogue. And what we want to do is highlight both pieces of dialogue and then select dual dialogue. And what it'll do is essentially put both chunks of dialogue next to each other on the same line of the page.
thus giving the impression to the reader that both people are talking at the same time. It's a nice way of visually representing that. What do you do when you have a character like Batman, who in some scenes is Bruce Wayne, but in other scenes is Batman?
And I was like, that's a really good question. I've never written a superhero movie before, and I was like, what would you do in that specific situation? So we actually went and looked at the script for Dark Knight Riders. Check this out.
In scenes where he's in the Batcave or he's talking to Alfred, his name is just Wayne in the script. And then when it's a scene where Batman is running around, and Batman is speaking, it's Batman. And I think, generally speaking, everyone is familiar enough
with the Bruce Wayne, Batman, and things that get what's going on. I understand that we're not talking about that in separate characters. Basically, answering the question, is he wearing a suit? But this did bring us to something else we wanted to talk about,
so why don't you dive in on that? Yeah, yeah. It's when they'll introduce a character and say, like, the main character won't know this person yet. It's like, oh, you know, a beautiful woman walks by, And then a few scenes later, they introduce it to be like, hi, I'm Margaret.
And that character's name changes to Margaret. One of the things that I always recommend is if it's really a short amount of time, it really makes more sense to say, I'll be in a cool room with Margaret and have her name be Margaret, even though the character doesn't know it yet.
Because, again, it's like you have to think one of those important jobs of why you even have character names listed is so that the production team keeps tracking. And so it like if we going to learn her name a few minutes later it makes sense just to call her that But continuous you using that to denote a real transition from one scene to another Like we are there no time that passed where we following the actors
from one location to another in real time. Like, for instance, in D.P.A., you guys were thinking, nobody cool-dosed in prom. We have this moment where Key butts Wendell and then she's like, take him away, boys. And then the goons grab Wendell
and drag him out the door and then Key follows him out the door. It's like interior change room and then interior dorm hallway continuous. And then it says, like, the goons drag one to walk down the hall. That's what you want. That's when you use a continuous.
Whereas, moment later, again, the implication is... Moment later is a little weird, though. They don't really need to use moment later all that often, but sometimes when you throw from one people are unsure of how much time is left.
So if it's like, somebody goes, well, but that guy was over there, and now he's, and then they, then you do interiors the other room later, and they open the door and he's dead. He's dead! Okay, moments later, the implications are big, they've brought the problem of the implications to the other.
Oh, okay, so this is a really fun one. Someone asked, what if I'm doing the scene set in space? Is that exterior space day, or is it exterior space night? Like, there are no day or night in space. So this is a really simple answer.
you just do exterior space. You don't have to say whether it's daytime or nighttime in space. As a general rule, you want to be using day and night almost exclusively, unless for a very specific
story reason. A scene will have to take place at sunrise or sunset. We're with a vampire. In those cases, I would use a sunrise or dawn or sunset or dusk
bloodline. But that would be the only time I would use it, is if it has a specific cinematic story reason. use that. Otherwise you just want it in there. So the other question people had was about kind of
specific camera notations like POV shots or close-ups and when to indicate it. This sort of falls under the same category for me where you're kind of getting into doing a cinematographer's job and unless like there's a very very critical story reason that you want to mention that you're doing
POV or something like that it's something that I recommend just staying away from completely. So let me ask you a question, because I'm a sloppy when it comes to this stuff. So when I do a POV, I'll do bold, POV, colon, and I'll describe the action.
Or similarly like close Han Solo hand slides under the table and he reaches his gun you know to end close How do you do that The way I always do that is I try to make the language as close to that
So I would literally say exactly what you said, like his hand reaches down to the gun underneath the table without ever noting close-up. You use the language to make the choice of shot unavoidable, if that kind of makes sense.
It's just a way of being careful and elegant without directly telling somebody what to do. That's very cool because I think actually once people don't realize how powerful the prose is as a tool for suggesting something. I think people tend to think of the prose just as a description of the action,
but it also, the way you describe something, suggests something about the cinematographer. When you use caps, when you use italics, when you use underlines, the general rule is that any time you're using caps, it should be exclusively for a character's name,
specifically the first time you introduce one. However, it's the kind of thing where when you're writing, you want to emphasize. And so a lot of times, I'll enjoy the poem structure, describing an intense event, and I'll use caps as well.
Yeah. I definitely break that rule all the time. I think we should find, like, a section of BGHS that is just labor violation of that. Because when we do our action, we'll be like,
he died this way and then shoots that guy. It's a mess, though. I'm trying to do it. You're trying to say not as I do. It's okay. Really good stuff and it'll see for itself. Yeah. If you're finding yourself needing to capitalize every other word to keep the viewer's attention,
it probably means you have a bigger problem going on than whether it's even seen itself. So as a general rule, fix this task just for your character names. And as far as italics and underlines are concerned, you don't really need them in a script.
Unless, of course, I get an italicize that you would use in writing. If you're saying something that, you know, like, again, the title of a book, you would italicize that the same way that you would italicize that in literature. So let's talk about music cues. This is another one that comes up a lot.
Again, this is one of those ones where it's like Duck and Don, like, capitalizing. It's like, be very, very, very, very careful. Unless you absolutely positively need a music cue to explain a theme, then you don't need it.
But if you are going to do one, if you absolutely like it, this sequence of a hitman assembling a sniper rifle has to have Ave Maria playing What you would do is you would at the top of the scene just say Ave Maria plays as X Y and Z happens And you can just call it out
at the top of the scene. Last subject, whenever we would do DGHS montages, essentially what we would do is just denote that we were starting a montage by just putting in alt-tab, begin montage. So the readers reading it, they go, oh, we're starting
a montage now. Once you do that, you then describe the montage. And that, you know, sometimes we'll do just for a flavor test, being like, we can get a montage of shots of the video game High School Campus. And then
I just go down the line and denote those names with an asterisk or a dash, and then just like a dash, and then the shot, and then a dash, and then the next shot. Now, that can be a little bit more complicated when you're intercutting between
separate scenes in a montage. Like, if you've got a montage, like there's one in Season 3, Episode 3, where we're cross-cutting between Ted and Gail, Brian and the FPS team and Key doing her
campaign. And I think basically what we do with that is like the montage, if I remember correctly, starts with the prison bar slamming shut on Ted and the prose is something like the prison bar slamming shut
on Ted and begin montage. And then from there I would do a new slug line every time we're changing location. So like we go from that to Key and her election headquarters and then we go from Key and her
election headquarters to Brian D and the FPS team feeding another team. So then you follow that pattern through the montage. Now let's say at a certain point you get to a point where you just want to be intercutting any editors describing between those things
just to kind of fill the momentum. At that point you could abandon the slug line and just describe, like, we intercut between these three teams. They can also always put end montage at the end of the montage as well
because then you always notice that it's over and you know what's next. Again, it's all about what you want to accomplish and trying to make it as clear as possible. So that's it for Screenplay Formatting 102. If you guys have any more questions, please throw them out in the form,
sound off in the discussion area, and we'll try our best to answer them either in the form themselves or maybe in Screenplay Formatting 201 or 103 or whatever. How does college work? But thanks so much for watching, guys.
The End