Annotate the screenplay
Highlight, note and reference the script from any of the three places SceneMatch shows it — the marks are shared, so what one department writes is what every other department reads.
Every department marks up the script, and on most productions those marks live in six different copies. The costume supervisor's highlights are on her PDF; the 1st AD's notes are on his. Nobody is reading the same page.
In SceneMatch there is one script and one set of marks on it.
Three viewers, one script
The screenplay appears in three places, and they are the same document:
- The screenplay page — the full script.
- The script modal, opened from a scene, showing that scene in the script.
- The script pane inside the scene editor, so you can see the text while you break the scene down.
A mark added in any one of them appears in the other two. Removing it anywhere removes it everywhere. There is no syncing step and no copy to keep up to date — it is one script being viewed three ways.
The marks you can make
Formatting marks change how the text looks: highlight in a colour, bold, italic, underline, strike-through, and coloured text. Use these the way a department already uses a highlighter — costume in one colour, props in another.
Notes attach written comments to a passage. A note annotation holds as many notes as the conversation needs: creating one takes you straight into writing the first, and others can be added and removed individually afterwards. Clearing all the notes leaves the marked passage in place; removing the annotation removes the lot.
References point a line of script at an actual item in your warehouse — see below, because they behave differently from everything else.
All of these sit on layers that can be switched off independently, which is what stops a heavily marked script becoming unreadable.
References: the script pointing at real things
A reference links selected text to the props, set dress or wardrobe a scene actually needs. Select the words, attach an item, and a small icon appears after the text. Attach several — from different departments if you like — and they line up in the order you added them.
You can attach an item that already exists, or create one from the attach menu and have it attached in the same step, which is usually faster while reading.
Click an icon and the item previews in place, so you can check you have pointed at the right coat without leaving the page. Click anywhere outside and the preview goes away.
References are unlike the other types in one important way: a reference exists only through the items it points at. It is created by its first item rather than by a toolbar button, it paints nothing by itself, and when you detach its last item the reference disappears with it. There is no such thing as an empty reference.
Where the marks turn up elsewhere
Annotations are not confined to the script. A note left on a passage surfaces where the work happens — open the scene it belongs to and the note is there in the breakdown, next to the characters and items it concerns.
That is the point of marking the script inside SceneMatch rather than on paper: the mark is attached to the scene, so it travels to whoever opens that scene next.
The thing that is not obvious
Marks are shared, not personal. There is no private annotation layer. What you highlight, everyone with access to that department's work sees.
That is usually what you want — it is the reason the script is worth marking here at all — but it does mean the script is a shared document rather than a notebook. If a note is a question rather than an instruction, write it as one; someone else will read it.
What happens when a revision arrives
Marks are anchored to the words they were placed on, not to a position on the page, so most of them survive a revision and re-find their text even when lines have moved. The ones whose text was rewritten or cut go quiet.
That behaviour has its own page — what happens to annotations in a revision — and it is worth reading before your first revision rather than after it.