Actually part of a film script, a “scene description” is an economical description of the action of a scene. Also simply called the “action” in a screenplay, it articulates characters' visible interactions with each other and their environment. While a scene description is a specialized form particularly relevant to film scripts, it can be used generically as a tool for close reading any visual medium. Learning how to write effective description is an important skill that helps you hone your ability to look closely and analyze a text, something we'll be doing a lot of in the coming months. Other assignments will also take film as their main primary sources—each of these assignments, in some form, will require you to look closely at the text you're working with.

The Assignment:

Choose any four-minute, continuous shot sequence from Buster Keaton's 22-minute short comic film, One Week, and write an action description for each shot in the sequence you've chosen. Your completed project will be around 3 to 4 pages, double spaced. Each camera shot should have one paragraph of action description, and each paragraph should be no more than 5 or 6 lines, no fewer than 2. This project has an additional challenge: you may not use the verb "to be," or any of its forms!

A scene description is economical, concise, not too detailed—but it is still effectively descriptive. After all, this is what the director, the actors, and the cameramen use to guide their work! The goal of a scene description is to set up each of the characters, what they're doing, how they interact, and where they are.

What I'm Looking For:

1. Start your scene description with the film's title and and the start- and end-time of the segment you've chosen.

2. Each scene should use as many brief paragraphs of description as necessary to follow the camera shots.

3. It should include only what can be seen and heard on the screen...

4. But not everything that can be heard and seen. If it is not essential to our understanding of some larger thematic idea or key conflict, don't put it in.

5. Use the present tense. Each scene in a film—as in a poem, or a story—takes place now.

6. Use the active voice (“a window slams shut”) not the passive voice (“a window is slammed shut”).

7. Use the third person. Be sure to introduce each character and their actions. Some clips may be establishing shots, in which case you'll be describing the setting in more detail.

8. Use no instances of the verb "to be"!

9. Use at least four film vocabulary terms to help you write your descriptions.