Beyond Continuity ─ Script Supervision for the Modern Filmmaker

This book is a guide to the craft of script supervising. It will include both practical instruction and examples that explain the skills needed to work as a professional script supervisor. It will also contain stories from my many years on extraordinary film sets that will bring those examples to life.

The author?will walk the reader through the process of becoming and working as a script supervisor. Included will be the basic skills such as how to breakdown a script, taking notes on set, matching, cheating, screen direction, and what the director, actors and editor expect from a script supervisor. The book will also include many of the more subtle but just as important skills, how to get a job, how to tell what is important in a script and on set, how to get along with the cast and crew, and how not to get overwhelmed when there is too much information to process.

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Our basic job as script supervisors is to understand and record the most essential elements of the film. In the past, we were often looked upon as secretaries. Things have changed and now we are usually thought of more like executive assistants, true filmmakers, a director’s backup and secret weapon. This change has come at the same time and in connection with a new film language. Post-modernist filmmaking is changing the grammar of the film and of course rules that we script supervisors used to champion. When it is no longer forbidden to cross the 180 line, our job is now to know what it means to cross the 180 line. Or to mix frame sizes, jump time or any of the poetic leaps that many of our contemporary filmmakers are now taking.

There hasn’t been a ‘how-to’ book about script supervising since this change has happened. This will be the first to address and explore the dynamics of this new filmmaking.

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Mary Cybulski is a script supervisor with more than twenty years experience. She has learned and invented techniques that have made her one of the most skilled and valued script supervisors in the US. She is the first call for many of our most inventive directors: John Sayles, David Mamet, Jodie Foster, M. Night Shyamalan, Ang Lee, Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, and Tony Gilroy. During these years she has developed her craft by both learning and inventing professional techniques. Cybulski has been a guest lecturer at NYU grad film, NYU grad acting, Columbia film school, Trinity College department of theatre, One on One acting workshop in NYC, and has mentored and trained dozens of hopeful script supervisors. She has made award winning short films, written and sold scripts for feature films, directed a feature film, worked in the camera department, the sound department, the production office, designed and shot visual effects. This additional film work has added insight to her craft and given her valuable skills, the ability to understand what a director needs and how to coordinate her work with the rest of the filmmaking team.