Script

Creators use script to mean wildly different documents. At one end, a full word-for-word draft read off a teleprompter. At the other, a page of beats with the key lines written out and everything between them improvised. Both count. What matters is that the structure gets decided before the camera is on, because structural problems are the expensive ones and an edit cannot invent an argument that was never recorded. Read whatever you write out loud before you shoot. Written English and spoken English come apart quickly, and a sentence that reads well on the page often sounds like a press release coming out of your mouth.