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02/02/2007: Something That Makes Medium Rare


I watched an episode of Medium the other night, gentle readers, and I noticed something interesting. They do very abrupt scene transitions on that show, clearly on purpose. The space between the last line of dialogue in one scene and the first line of the next one is generally the same as between two lines in the same scene. It gives an interesting effect, because as a viewer you have to adjust on the fly -- oh, we're in a new place now -- over and over.

I haven't seen a produced Medium script, but it would obviously reflect this stylistic choice. Scenes wouldn't end with the very-commonly used, almost automatic stage direction: "Off her reaction, we... CUT TO:" since the cuts do not come off reaction shots.

The question on the table, then, is, to what extent is it important that your spec script reflect stylistic idiosyncrasies like this one? (I'm not just talking about Medium here, but about all the shows you might spec and all their little quirks.)

There's actually not an obvious answer to this one, since, as we've discussed before, you never know if the person who is going to read your spec will be very familiar with the actual show. As a result, it's possible you could violate all sorts of rules that a show follows and still be fine if your storytelling is sharp and your dialogue is snappy.

But why not get it right? If I were writing a Medium, I would execute the scene transitions in their established style. I would also try to make it very, very clear that I was making the choice to do so. After all, you don't want an uninformed reader to think that you're making abrupt, jarring transitions because you don't know how to do lingering emotional ones. I might even go so far as to do something like this:

ALLISON
Some line of dialogue

And just like that, we're in:

INT. NEXT LOCATION

And I would do some kind of variation on that for the first several transitions, making it clear that I'm making a choice. I wouldn't even blame a writer for going so far as to write a stage direction like:

And in classic Medium-style, we cut right into:

Lunch: tried to get to sushi, but LA was a big snag today. Ended up at Jack in the Box with those stuffed jalapeno things. Good.