Here's Why Script Supervisors Are the 'Secret Ninjas' of Film Production

When it comes time to hand over a cut of the film to the editor, your work as a script supervisor really starts to show. "It comes down to making sure your notes are nice and organized so the editor knows what happened on set," Grande explained. "When the director’s sitting there and he’s like, 'Remember that one take we had where his hand was like this and I really liked it?' The editor can go back to your note."

Make time to meet with the editor

This advice goes both ways: editors should be making steps to meet the script supervisor, as well. The only member of the panel that wasn't a script supervisor was editor Josh Ethier, and while many script supervisors don't make it a priority to meet with the editor of the project, Ethier visits the set whenever he can, or at least once, just to meet everybody.

"I always make it a point to visit the script supervisor and the production sound supervisor," he said, "because those are two people that I’m either going to love or hate, and I want to find out right away which side they fall on."

While a few script supervisors may think otherwise, Ethier insisted that he reads all the notes given him and that they are absolutely invaluable to his craft.

He explained how he melds them into his process: "I want to have a look at the footage first, get my eyes on it, get my own perspective. But then when I go back with my notes, and I’m actually sitting down and starting to put it together, I have the script book and my own review. Then, I can compare what I noticed to what the director wanted, what he circled, and I know that I’m going to have to make a choice—bad choices, continuity-wise—but it’s best to at least know about them and then you know how to combat them."

Sample of a marked up script supervisor's script.

Continuity will be sacrificed in favor of performance

The "bad continuity choices" that Ethier spoke of happen all the time. "So many times, you’ll be watching a movie or a show, and you’ll notice continuity errors everywhere," Gina Grande pointed out. "It’s not because you weren’t doing your job," she insisted, "it’s because, in the edit, the performance may have been really genius in that one take where the continuity was wrong. They will always go with the better performance rather than trying to match continuity.”

In fact, most breaks in continuity aren't the script supervisor's fault

Butterly was hesitant to attribute any of the breaks in continuity to a lack of focus by an attentive script supervisor.

"The wardrobe department is really in charge of making sure they’re wearing the right clothes, and the prop department has to make sure they have the right props," she said. "So, if there’s a mistake, that’s their fault. But, if it gets filmed with the wrong wardrobe or the wrong props, then that’s my fault. So I’m kind of the back up on continuity. But I am the only person who is keeping track of the shots, the setups, how many pages we accomplished that day, what scenes we dropped, and what scenes we owe. It really helps production to know if we’re on schedule—do we have to cut or add scenes?"

Have strategies for dealing with directors

Regardless of who's to blame for whatever mistake, script supervisors clearly hold a lot of responsibility. In that sense, it is also their duty to inform the director when something isn't right. The problem is, directors don't always want to hear what they have to say.

"One of the methods that I’ve learned is after you’ve asked a question, always look at the floor," Moore advised. "It kind of takes away the confrontation of it all." 

Butterly also has special strategies in place for dealing with directors: "I always phrase it like a question. I say, 'Does it bother you that he’s wearing a blue shirt when he was wearing a red shirt in the last scene?'"

"When you get [directors] who don’t like hearing, 'You’re doing this wrong,' there’s nothing you can do and you’ll get fired."

When you're in the early stages of a production, it's important to gauge what type of director you're working with so you can test the waters. "I’ve found there are two axes of directors: there’s competent and there’s confident," Butterly explained. "You can have a beginning director that doesn’t know what they’re doing. But they can be self-confident and they’ll ask you what to do, and then you tell them, and they’ll announce, 'Okay, everybody, we’re going to do this!' They come off looking like a hero and they love you."

"But when you get people who don’t like hearing, 'You’re doing this wrong,' there’s nothing you can do and you’ll get fired," Butterly continued. "I’ve been fired many times—never because I was a bad supervisor, but because the director was not confident in his own abilities and he knew he was doing it wrong. He just like didn’t being reminded."

Rick Alverson's 'Entertainment.' Roe Moore was a script supervisor on the production.Credit: Magnolia Pictures

Always ask a director before you deal with actors

Considering the delicate relationship between the script supervisor and the director, you should always approach the director to talk about talent. Sometimes, directors don’t want you interfering at all. "Sometimes they want to be the single line of communication for the actors because they don’t care if the continuity is right," Moore said. "If the performance is right, who cares about that? But sometimes a director is like, 'No, no, no, go fix it!' and then I can just run in and chat with the actors."

"Never throw a line to an actor unless he calls for it. You could ruin the scene."

"Never throw a line to an actor unless he calls for it," Butterly chimes in. "They could be emoting and they can be acting. They may think it’s the most brilliant silence on earth. And you think that they may have forgotten their line, and if you throw it, you ruin the scene."

Shooting digital has made the job more demanding

While there have been many digital products to emerge for screen supervisors over the past couple of years (ScriptE, iPads, etc.), they aren't as helpful as you might think. Many of the panel members couldn't stress how important the physical act of writing something down can be in their profession. The more you write down, the less you have to remember.  

When you have ScriptE on an iPad Pro with Apple pencil and use a PDF editor, you're essentially using pen and paper on a much more expensive digital set up. But if you don't have these digital tools, you could lose your job. Apparently, it's the producers who are asking for the technology; true to our modern times, they think that access to these programs make a good script supervisor.

Or, as Butterly put it, "They just want shiny."

More cameras mean you should be asking for more money

When asked about the hardest thing to deal with on set, many of the panel members were quick to point out that productions are using more and more cameras, so there are more and more screens that script supervisors need to be watching to make sure there aren't any mistakes, But the good news is that you get compensated for this extra complication.

For example, Butterly describes how her bumps are made: "If it’s one camera, you get [no bump], two cameras, you get a bump, and then two to infinity cameras, it’s the same amount of money. My next goal is to be able to negotiate per camera." One of the other members of the panel was already making bumps per camera, so if you're working on a multi-cam set, you should try to negotiate per camera, as well.