The way you interpret a script can drastically change the way the viewer will experience a scene. In the script “Bookshop” we start with Ella, one of the main characters, browsing through some books on the bookshelf. Immediately we have posed the question of how we would shoot this action. Do we follow the script word by word? Or do we do something different?

Personally, I would follow the script but not meticulously. I would start with a shot of the books with a pan that starts on the books and ends on Ella, then a shot of her point of view looking at the book she finds interesting. When she reads the back cover, I would switch to a wider shot that shows the room in almost its entirety to establish the place the character is. Everyone’s way to cover this or any scene will greatly differ. How you cover a scene is a matter of personal interpretation. For me, as I think for many, the first thing I do when reading a script, is imagining the scene in my head thinking of how it will play out. The next step I would take is to draw a storyboard of what I imagined so that I would remember it and then I would refine the storyboard with new ideas I come up with. Another thing that will affect the final result of a scene can be the setting where the scene is shot. Every space has its opportunities and problems to solve. Sometimes it is not possible to place the camera where it was planned to go, or sometimes some ideas just do not work in real life, something you cannot fully know until you are actually shooting.

So, in my opinion, there is no set way to shoot a scene. Some things that you thought were amazing on paper, can not look so well when executing those plans.