A script breakdown is the list of everything each scene needs before anyone can shoot it: where it happens, who’s in it, what’s in their hands and what they’re wearing, plus anything that will cost time or money on the day.
The producer or first assistant director makes it from the approved script, one scene at a time. The budget, the shooting schedule and the call sheets all start from it.
Film breakdowns run to dozens of color-coded sheets. A corporate or brand video needs one row per scene, and below you’ll find the elements to tag, a template to copy and a filled example.
In short
- A script breakdown lists what each scene needs: location, interior or exterior, time of day, cast, extras, props, wardrobe and notes.
- Make it from the approved script, one scene per row or sheet.
- A director’s breakdown is a different document: it splits each scene into shots and becomes the shot list.
- Group the rows by location and by whatever pins the clock, and you have the order of the shoot day.
Script breakdown vs. director’s breakdown
The term covers two jobs that ask different questions of the same script.
The script breakdown asks what each scene needs to exist. It belongs to production, who use it to book locations, call cast, rent gear and build the schedule.
The director’s breakdown asks how each scene will be filmed: framing, angle, movement, the action in frame and how sound is recorded. It ends up as the shot list, and it comes second, because a shot needs a place and a person before it can be planned.
Going through footage after the shoot and noting the good takes is a third job, closer to a paper edit than to either breakdown.
The elements to tag in each scene
- Scene number and heading, as they appear in the script.
- Location, the address or the room, which later becomes the location scout.
- Interior or exterior, and time of day. An exterior at sunrise only happens once a day.
- Cast, anyone who speaks or features. In corporate video, usually the client’s people.
- Extras, anyone in the background. Each one needs a release form.
- Props and wardrobe: the product, a uniform, a badge, the branded packaging. Mark what the client supplies.
- Notes, anything that costs time or money: a noisy room, opening hours, special equipment, wardrobe continuity between scenes.
On a feature film, each category gets a highlighter color on the printed script, and every scene gets its own breakdown sheet. The legend varies between productions and software, so pick one, print it on the first page and keep it for the whole project.
A script breakdown template to copy
Paste this header into the first cell of a Google Sheet and use Data > Split text to columns. In Excel, it’s Data > Text to Columns with a semicolon as the delimiter.
Scene;Location;Int/Ext;Time of day;Cast;Extras;Props;Wardrobe;Notes
One row per scene works for most shoots of a single day or two. If a scene needs more than one line of notes, it probably needs its own conversation with the client before the shoot.
A filled example for a corporate video
A made-up client, Ipê Bakery, wants a two-minute brand video about how the bakery runs. The script has four scenes: the shop opening at dawn, production in the bakehouse with a few lines from the owner, a customer being served, and the owner closing the video from behind the counter.
| Scene | Location | Int/Ext, time | Cast | Extras | Props and wardrobe | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shop front | Ext, dawn | Walter, baker | None | Branded apron, key to the roller door | Only one chance a day: check sunrise time |
| 2 | Bakehouse | Int, day | Helena, owner; two bakers | None | White uniforms and caps; a batch coming out of the oven | The mixer is loud: switch it off while Helena talks |
| 3 | Shop | Int, day | Camila, counter staff | Three customers (staff in plain clothes) | Branded paper bag, full display case | Release forms for all three extras |
| 4 | Shop | Int, day | Helena | None | Same outfit as scene 2 | Continuity: scenes 2 and 4 cut together |
The breakdown has already settled half the day. Scene 1 pins the start to sunrise. Scenes 3 and 4 share a location and go in the same block, whatever sits between them in the script.
Helena’s outfit ties the bakehouse and the shop to the same day, or someone photographs it to match later. The oven batch depends on the bakery’s own schedule, which is a question for the week before, not for the set.
Every row is also a budget line. The three extras, two locations to scout and the move between them go into the budget template.
From the director’s breakdown to the shot list
With the script breakdown done, the director takes each scene and writes the shots the camera needs. Scene 3, the customer being served, becomes four:
| Shot | Framing and movement | Action | Sound |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3A | Wide, locked off | The customer walks in | Room ambience |
| 3B | Medium, handheld | Camila takes bread from the case and wraps it | Sync |
| 3C | Insert, locked off | Hands fold the branded bag shut | None |
| 3D | Close-up, reverse | The customer smiles as she takes the bag | None |
The full template, with setup, minutes and priority columns and a ten-shot example, is in the shot list template. A scene drawn frame by frame is a storyboard, worth it for ads and motion work, rarely for corporate.
From breakdown to shooting schedule
The breakdown says what has to happen. The schedule says when. Group the rows by location, then by whatever pins the clock inside each location: light, someone who only has half an hour, opening hours.
In the example the day runs shop front at dawn, bakehouse during the morning bake, and the shop last with scenes 3 and 4 back to back. If the script had put the shop in scenes 1 and 4, they’d still go in one block.
Each block gets its time and length in the shooting schedule, and each person’s call time goes on the call sheet the night before.
Common breakdown mistakes
- Breaking down a script that isn’t approved. Every scene change undoes rows, and the schedule built on them.
- Forgetting what the client supplies. Product, uniforms and branded packaging come from them, and nobody can buy them the night before.
- Treating extras as a detail. Three people in the background are three release forms and someone to invite them.
- Skipping the notes column. That’s where the loud mixer and the sunrise time live, the two things most likely to make the day run late.
- Putting scenes and shots in one table. It gets too wide to read on set, and nobody knows whether a row is a scene or a shot.
How this works in RecReview
RecReview doesn’t do script breakdowns. The scene list and the shot list stay in your spreadsheet, and the production plan works one level up. Each block in the plan is a whole video, linked to its task.
The breakdown can sit on the video’s task as an attachment, either a link to the spreadsheet or the file itself (CSV, Excel or PDF, up to 50 MB), and clicking the video block in the plan opens that task.
What the breakdown decided goes into the plan’s own fields. The Talent column says who’s on camera in each video, and a note on a block, like “shop front at sunrise” or “mixer off during the interview”, shows on the shared plan, which opens without a login.
Locations saved in the workspace settings can carry an address, which the plan header links to Google Maps. Between videos shot in different places, a Setup Change block holds the time to strike and rebuild.
On the day, ticking a block records when it ended, shows how far ahead or behind it ran and moves the rest of the day to match.
