Insights from the 2013 Black List: Title Pages

Recap

This series takes a look at current trends in screenwriting and screenplay formatting, by examining the 2013 Black List scripts.

In Part 1, I investigated the page count stats.
In Part 2, I examined the use of bold and underlined scene headings.
In Part 3, I took a look at the number of blank lines that precede scene headings.

The Black List 2013 – Part 4: Title Page Formatting

Black List 2013 - Insights Soooo… title pages. The various formatting books I rely on consistently prescribe title pages where the title of the script is:

all uppercase
underlined
written in a standard 12 point Courier / Courier New font (or equivalent — like Courier Final Draft or Courier Prime)

But as anyone who reads professional scripts on a regular basis will tell you, that rule is routinely broken.

You might be inclined to say — “Yeah, but the pros can get away with it, but we can’t.”

And you might be right.

Speaking in generalities and from my experiences, the farther up the chain you are in Hollywood, the less likely anyone is to treat such a thing as a red flag.

So depending on where you’re at, and your level of confidence with the important stuff that comes after your title page, you may want to just stick to the standard formatting so you don’t inadvertently annoy anyone.

Having said that, I almost never use Courier 12 pt for my script titles!

I feel it’s the one part of the script where I can shed the rigid confines of standard script formatting, and add some flavor. After reading the first page of one of my scripts, I doubt that any reviewer is still going to be agitated by my flamboyant font use.

The 2013 Black List Title Page Stats

So where do we stand this year for title page formatting practices? The investigation yielded some surprising results:

Of the 72 Black List scripts this year, only 14 used “standard” formatting for their script titles (19.4%)
That means 58 used non-standard formatting (a full 80.6%)!

Here’s how it broke down:

20 script titles used a font size that was larger than 12 pt (28%)
Of those, 14 used a font other than a Courier variation (19.4%).
Note: No scripts used a non-standard font while keeping standard point size. If a non-standard font was used, the font size was always greater than 12 pt.
Of those, 2 used a graphic image for their script titles (2.8%).
4 of the scripts that used a non-standard font — used the font for more than just the script title (5.6%) .
3 of the 72 scripts used a space between the letters of their titles (e.g. E X T I N C T I O N) (4.2%)
8 scripts used a Mixed Case Title (11%).
17 scripts used bold for their script title (23.6%)
38 scripts did not underline their script title (53%)

… And of course, unless specified above, there’s a lot of overlap (e.g. some scripts used both bold and Mixed Case).

Non-Standard Fonts

For those who are curious, here’s a list of the non-Courier fonts that were used (excluding the two that used graphics in place of their titles), in alphabetical order: