Schema Reference

Overview

Screenplay documents tend to focus on the visual presentation of content for printing purposes, and are generally represented in authoring programs using styled paragraphs. For example, Final Draft uses the <Paragraph> XML element, whereas Open Screenplay Format uses the <para> tag.

When looking at the data representation of the same content, the schema is a simplified document model that conforms to predictable patterns of inheritance.

Container
├── Document
│   ├── Bookmark
│   ├── Scene
│       ├── Element
│           ├── General
│           ├── Action
│           ├── Character
│           ├── Parenthetical
│           ├── Dialogue
│           ├── Transition
│           ├── Shot

A Global Container object holds the Document, which consists of a Header, Footer, Cover and additional Meta attributes, but also contains one or Annotation objects, optional Bookmark objects, and a collection of Scene objects.

A Scene object has a Heading and comprises a body sequence of one or more Element objects, such as action description, dialogue (single or dual, audio source etc), or transitions (CUT TO).

Data Formats