WHAT ARE “SIDES”?

“Have you got any sides?” “Can I check the sides?” “Do you know where my sides are?”

Will be things said so often on professional shoots that not knowing what it means will show how inexperienced you are in a split second.

But yet for some odd reason it was never a term that crossed anyone’s lips in all the time I spent at the grassroots level in the East Midlands or during the years I spent in education.

SO HERE’S YOUR ANSWER

Sides are…

…the pages of the script that are being shot that day. Because scenes are often shot in non-linear order “sides” are printed out each day and handed to cast and crew for easy reference.

While there’s no requirement typically they’ll be printed side by side on a single A4 sheet and cut into A5 sizes.

This is for convenience so cast and crew can easily carry them around for reference, and also to save costs given that the production office will be churning large numbers of them out every single day.

In fact if you pop into the office at certain points in the day their printers will be operating non-stop preparing them for the next day.

HOW DO I CREATE “SIDES”?

The old fashioned way is time consuming and will drive any PA (production assistant) crazy. Thankfully multiple companies have created ways of automatically generating them.

WRITER DUET: Character Scenes Report (https://www.writerduet.com/article/96-character-scenes-report)

FINAL DRAFT: How do I print out character sides? (https://kb.finaldraft.com/s/article/How-do-I-print-out-character-sides)

CELTX: How to make script sides (https://blog.celtx.com/watch-this-how-to-make-sides/)

STUDIO BINDER: Script sides in seconds (https://www.studiobinder.com/script-sides/)

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. NOW YOU KNOW. LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK BELOW.