Short Film Beat Sheet Example

Learn how to create a beat sheet here write your first draft.

Short film beat sheet example. Naturally some films will need far more than 40 beats and some will need fewer but limiting the beat sheet to 40 individual beats allows for a more manageable workflow at least in my experience. Here s a template we made for you to use as a guide. It could be stated that if you have 60 scenes then you could create a beat sheet with 60 entries that describes the mission or the content or. Fun and games 30 55.

In short beat sheets are made to cover all the major scenes that a great screenplay needs and they go beyond the traditional three act structure. However as i mentioned with the save the cat beat sheet examples above it s good to recognize that beat sheets are just a guideline. Short films follow the exact same screenplay structure as feature films do think of them as short screenplays. The blake snyder beat sheet project title.

Now that you know the shape of your story start writing the first draft of your short film script. A great beat sheet coupled with our story map gets my drafts ready to go out into the world. Story and character are two sides of the same coin. They are to help guide you through everything from the opening scene to the inciting event to the eventual rock bottom to the final triumph.

A beat sheet is a helpful companion to the outlining process. A beat sheet as in the beat of each story point is a list of short bulleted descriptions about each scene in your story. That beat sheet is then fleshed out across forty index cards which the writer uses to maintain an overview of the film s plot while crafting the script. The use of a beat sheet is a means of avoiding all these disasters.

All is lost 75. You can even use a beat sheet calculator if you know the expected page count which comes in handy if you want to write a short film beat sheet. The movie beat sheet 1. See how the film classic high noon starring gary cooper and grace kelly hits blake snyder s story beats in this save the cat beat sheet and understand why the film is in the blake snyder genre superhero.

Dark night of the soul 75 85. It s important to point out that for each of the beats on your beat sheet there may be multiple scenes within them. Break into three 85. Break into two 25 7.

Inevitably your protagonist will attract characters and scenarios that will teach the valuable lesson of the story i e the arc. We should treat them as a tool and not a rule. Now that you ve seen the template let s go through the individual beats and look at a few movie examples to hammer home a few points. Act one contains ten cards act two contains twenty cards and act three contains the final ten.

It s crucial to give your character a strong and clear need.