Recently, there was a bit of a dust up over a minor formatting question (the use of CONTINUOUS in scene headings). I’m not trying to relitigate that here... but I suddenly wondered if TV writers and film writers do this one small thing differently. And since both are here... /1

I thought I’d ask you. Long story short, when I moved to LA 12 years ago, I’d learned you used CONTINUOUS when the action was continuous across scenes and that’s how I used it. On my 1st show, however, my showrunner read something of mine and said I was using CONTINUOUS wrong. /2

He said you only used CONTINUOUS when the camera follows the action from one location to another. Like in a walk and talk through different rooms (which our shows did lots of). Otherwise, for the most part, we just used DAY or NIGHT. /3

This is the first I had heard that so I confirmed the rule with another writer... who said yes, CONTINUOUS was for production so they knew to light more than one location at once. That made sense to me. And it never came up again. From anyone. Until now.

How did you learn it?

Postscript: There’s also a chance this one show did something differently and I just took that rule with me.

Or, perhaps, film has one set of rules for this and TV has created its own variation on this rule.

Either way, now I’m very curious.

Final note.. I know writers can get really passionate about grammar and structure. This post is not meant to cause any division... I’m just honestly curious about how different people approach this same rule... and if anyone else was taught what I was taught.