Continuity script

History

These scenario scripts evolved into continuity scripts, which listed a number of shots within each scene, thus providing continuity to streamline the filmmaking process. While some productions, notably D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), were made without a script, preapproved "continuities" allowed the increasingly powerful studio executives to more accurately budget for film productions. Movie industry revolutionary Thomas H. Ince, a screenwriter himself, invented movie production by introducing an "assembly line" system of filmmaking that utilized far more detailed written materials, clearly dedicated to "separating conception from execution". Film researcher Andrew Kenneth Gay posits that, "The process of scripting for the screen did not so much emerge naturally from other literary forms such as the play script, the novel, or poetry nor to meet the artistic needs of filmmakers but developed primarily to address the manufacturing needs of industrial production."