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I was wondering what method people use when intercutting between 2 or more scenes.

For example, if you are going back and forth between a hospital ward and an office meeting and you wanted to play them off one another, draw parallels, unfold both in tandem, etc.

As far as I'm concerned the scene heading goes something like this:

INTERCUT - INT. LOCATION #1/LOCATION #2 - TIME

Or some variant of that.

My question is, when chopping between the two scenes do you need to include slug-lines for every alternate?

It would save a lot of space if this wasn't required, as in some cases it may just be a quick cut to and from. By having a scene heading each time would inflate your page length while also giving an inaccurate reflection of how long the whole would actually last on screen.

Curious to hear what you all think.

Col.

Hey Col,

I guess it depends on how much time you're spending in each location. I do this a lot in my feature, but I usually have a line or two of narrative and dialgoue from at least two characters - so I re-use the slug lines.

I would say type it out with the slugs and see what it looks like - if it reads well and helps with the white space, then leave it. If it's so frenetic as to need an alternate structure, then I would do it thw way you describe above.

AJR

Anthony

Thanks for your input.

Around three quarters of the scenes have no dialogue, the remaning contain a line or two max.

As it stands, I have included sluglines and it looks fine. It's the space requirements I'm more concerned with. I reckon the scenes would only take 2 minutes approx on screen but because of the gaps its taking up 4 pages. I'm hoping there is aquicker, more page effective way of writing it.

This is how I did it:

Quoted from Senior Year INT. ANGELA’S HOUSE - BEDROOM - EVENING action line EXT. ANGELA’S HOUSE - PORCH - MOMENTS LATER action line INT. ANGELA'S HOUSE - LIVING ROOM action line/dialogue INTERCUT: EXT. PORCH - SAME TIME action line/dialogue INT. BEDROOM action PORCH action line/dialogue BEDROOM action line PORCH action line/dialogue BEDROOM action line PORCH action line/dialogue

This might not be necessary, but I wanted every scene change to be clear. If there's a more economical way to do it, I'll give it a try.

Quoted from NJDevil This is how I did it: This might not be necessary, but I wanted every scene change to be clear. If there's a more economical way to do it, I'll give it a try.

1) Unnecessary is absolutely right?

Setup the location of both characters, and then write

INTERCUT

And then write the dialogue or whatever.

Example:
INT. JASON'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

He picks up the phone and punches in a number.

INT. SANDRA'S EXERCISE ROOM - SAME

She picks up her ringing phone.

INTERCUT telephone conversation or as needed

or an alternate way to handle this:

INTERCUT - JASON'S BEDROOM/SANDRA'S EXERCISE ROOM

And just write

Of course there are a few other ways to do it as well but NJ you might want to take a different route.

Colkurtz8, the way you have it will probably work as well.

Ghostwriter

NJ

Thank you for your example although I'm hoping there is a more succinct way to go about. Brevity is essential here.

Ghostwriter

I know that phone conversations can be done in that way, it’s probably the most common example of where intercutting is applied and I dread to think if it couldn't be done in the way you correctly outlined.

However, I'm talking about action plus (minimal) dialogue taking place in both scenes running concurrent to one another. We'll say I guy is being discharged from hospital while in another part of town his girlfriend and his mother or whatever are preparing the house for his impending arrival. Both scenes will have to describe a number of different processes or actions with the odd line of dialogue.

So, in this case, can you switch back and forth without having to slugline each change. I realise it would be confusing otherwise as NJ pointed out but if you made sure to highlight the main character in each scene at every change, would that be enough?

Thanks again for your help, people.

Col.

Yes, I believe so... but let others weigh-in.

Heres what I would do...

I usually set up the first cut to establish that they’re in separate locations, then state INTERCUT AS NECESSARY so the director/editor will know what to do. (The flow of the scene works better too)  I could be wrong in my thinking.

"But having said that, formattting is liberal now days so as long as you make it clear during the sequence then you should be able to get away with it."

Ghostwriter

Ghostwriter

That seems the most logical approach. The problem is, if you insert INTERCUT at each change it’s going to take up the same space as inserting the appropriate sluglines.

So yeah, this appears to be the correct way to go about it, it’s just not what I wanted to hear, you know. Case in point, the complete sequence I'm writing is coming in a 6 pages when according to my hopelessly erroneous outline I had allowed for 3. As you can see, I is not happy.