If I want to have two scenes running at the same time, and I want characters in one scene moving locations.  Is this the right way to do it?

INT. MARK'S HOUSE -  BEDROOM - DAY

MARK wakes up and walks down to the

INT. MARK'S HOUSE - DINNING ROOM - CONTINUOUS

where he finds a letter on the table.  

EXT. MARK'S HOUSE - SAME TIME

JOE (30) approaches the house.  He carries a SMALL PISTOL.

So I can have characters moving from the bedroom to the dinning room, and I can have a character outside the house at the same time the other character is in the dinning room?

Cheers,

Brian

I don't generally write in this fashion, but this is how I would do it.  CONTINUOUS would definitely be preferable to SAME TIME, format wise.

INT. MARK'S HOUSE -  BEDROOM - DAY

MARK wakes up and walks down to the

DINING ROOM

where he finds a letter on the table.  

EXT. MARK'S HOUSE - CONTINUOUS

JOE (30) approaches the house.  He carries a SMALL PISTOL.


I'm 100% my style, I'd write it this way.

INT. MARK'S HOUSE -  BEDROOM - DAY

MARK lies in his bed, staring at the ceiling.  He throws the blanket off of him, gets up and exits the room.

INT. MARK'S HOUSE - DINING ROOM - DAY

Mark enters the room, and walks to a nearby table where he finds a letter.  He picks it up and looks at it.  

EXT. MARK'S HOUSE - DAY

JOE (30) approaches the house.  He carries a SMALL PISTOL.


There's a little more that could be added descriptively, but that's the gist of it.

I've been talking with various writers and story editors, and they've all mentioned that they don't use continuous anymore, but state the time of day in every scene.

The main reason is if the script gets shot, 99% of the time the scripts are not shot in order, so when they (they being AD, director, etc..) see continuous, it's too vague and they need to know the precise time of day.

Stew

For a spec script, you wouldn't need the header for the dining room as it flows from the bedroom scene.


Phil

Really, continuous is one of those redundancies that popped up at some point in the past, and I'm sure someone thought it was terribly clever at the time. Really, if you don't label the time of day, it is assumed that whatever the last time of day given is still in effect, but it is better, as MacDuff pointed out, to label each slug individually with its own time of day.

An example Mike gave is using secondary headings which are used quite commonly in the instance you give (when multiple situations are occurring simultaneously in the same location).

So don't bother with continuous...I mean, day and night both have fewer letters so it's less work to use them anyway.