My First Script in Portuguese

As promised in the last post about screenwriting, here’s a sample of one of the very first scripts I ever wrote. I developed it during my postgraduate studies at Belas Artes de São Paulo.

Nowadays, I would change a lot in it, since I now have a stronger command of screenwriting language and technical writing. Still, it remains valuable as a learning experience and as an example of project development.

So, I’ll use it to illustrate and explain a few initial concepts involved in developing a script:

Script cover

Creative package

• A logline is one, two, or even three short sentences that synthesize the story: the protagonist, the conflict, and what is at stake. A logline is not a summary of the script, but the central idea that drives the narrative or the reason the story exists.

  
  

• A synopsis is a short text, usually around three paragraphs, that presents the story in a more developed way than the logline. It contextualizes the universe, introduces the main characters, and describes the central conflict, giving a clear sense of the narrative’s trajectory. The synopsis explains how the story unfolds, but without going into every detail.

  
  

• The key scene, that is, the scene presented here, is scene 15. It takes place on pages 9 and 10 of the script, which is still early in the story, roughly equivalent to about 10 minutes into the film, a moment when we are already moving toward the end of the characters’ introduction.

Page 9

Page 10

One important note: this script in Portuguese was developed using Celtx, so some markings and parentheticals are typical of that software. Nowadays, I mostly work with Final Draft or Fade In.