Click HERE to read the script

In answer to actual requests, I'm posting an actual, used-in-an-episode Garfield animation script.  I tried to pick an "average" one — one that involved no unusual animation, cutting, format or other oddities — so you could observe the basics without a lot of distractions.  I make no claims about the quality of the story or jokes but this is, more or less, how one presents one's material for production.  Or, at least it's how I do it.  Other writers have their own variations on the format and I am absolutely not suggesting they are wrong.

These Garfield cartoons were supposed to be around 6-and-a-half minutes.  Most folks figure 30 seconds to a page, and there are some producers who get impractically rigid about page count; i.e., decreeing that the script for what will be a 22-minute episode be no more than, say, 45 pages.  I find this silly because any such "rule" is arbitrary.  When I was writing 22-minute episodes for Hanna-Barbera, I handed in 50-page scripts that were short, and 40-pagers that ran long.  If you tell writers that a script cannot be over X pages, they're only going to start fiddling with margins and omitting stage directions.  (Once, when a producer ordered me to trim a 50-page script to 45, I did so by cutting descriptions for the artists, and combining shots that should rightfully have been separate.  I chopped the five pages without trimming one action or speech, so the edict didn't actually make the episode any shorter.  It just meant the artists received less input from me.)

The script for Skyway Robbery is 14 pages and it came right in at 6:30 on the button.  The page count would have been a bit longer but for two reasons...

1. Apart from a few minor, incidental characters, the players are all established.  Garfield, Odie and Jon were, of course, already designed and their voices were cast.  The antagonist, Mr. Swindler, was a recurring character who had appeared before...so no space had to be taken to describe his look, voice, attitude, etc.  If this had been a new series — or, especially, a pilot script — I would have included more explanation as to how I imagined the characters walking, talking, dressing, etc.  (By the way: Swindler's voice was provided by Carl Ballantine — aka "The Amazing Ballantine" — who some of you may remember from the TV series, McHale's Navy and dozens of other appearances.  A very funny man.)

2. I was the voice director (and casting person) for the show.  Ergo, when I wrote the script, I wasn't too concerned with describing the voices of the minor characters or the way any of the actors might read their lines.  In fact, when you have good voice actors — and I thought the ones we had were as good as any who've ever been assembled — it's a good idea to not give them too many instructions.  You want them to be free to find their own interpretations and to use their own instincts.  After the first few takes, you can always give them more information, if necessary, but you cannot make them completely forget directions.  Still, if I knew I would not be involved in the recording, I would put in a few more directives to the players and perhaps underline more words for emphasis.

I should also point out that, by virtue of directing the voices, I had the ability to rewrite dialogue during the recording session...and often did.  This is one of the ways in which I think some cartoon studios harm their product by maintaining a rigid, "assembly line" mentality and compartmentalizing the functions of the writer(s) and artists.  At Hanna-Barbera, writers were usually not allowed in the sessions, so we never had the chance to hear the actors read the dialogue and then adjust it, nor could we say, "Well, here's what I was hearing in my head when I wrote that..."  It is also insane not to listen to and perhaps incorporate the actors' ideas and improvisation.  ("Yabba dabba doo" was something Alan Reed ad-libbed during an early Flintstones recording session.)

The Number One question I am asked by writers tackling their first animation script — especially writers who are familiar with live-action scripts — is, "Is it true you have to call every shot?"  Answer: Not every shot, but a lot more than you would for live-action.  If you called every single shot that would naturally wind up on the screen, you would unduly restrict the artists and you'd make your script seem artificially about 10-20% longer.  You would also make it about 40% harder to read.  On Garfield and Friends, it was not necessary for me to secure any approvals from the studio or network — I just wrote 'em and we did 'em — but I still wanted the scripts to read smoothly.  So I put in about two-thirds of the shots I expected would wind up in the finished version and trusted that the storyboard artists would break things up further.  (We had, for the most part, terrific storyboard artists.)  A general rule-of-thumb might be to try and average 5-6 shots per page.

A few other things to keep in mind, and then we'll get on with this.  Some folks don't understand why certain instructions to the actors are are put in parentheticals under the character name instead of in the description of the action.  It's because, in most cases, the voice actors work off scripts that only contain the center column.  In other words, if you write...

...the actor may not see that line about sarcasm because it may not be in the script he works from, which will only include dialogue.  Therefore — and especially if I'm not going to be at the recording — I put the acting direction in as a parenthetical, like this...

Another thing we do is to indicate sounds that the actors should provide but which may not be expressed as words.  For example...

A convention that I have developed is to put these in brackets.  This is because I write in Script Thing (now known as Movie Magic Screenwriter), a program that will automatically put anything in parentheses into the margins for a parenthetical.  I also sometimes put dialogue in quotes to suggest a desired meaning...

Odie is a non-articulate character.  He does not speak words but, rather, whines and grunts.  In this case, I want the actor to just make sounds but I'm telling him what I'd like those sounds to convey.  (Again, I have the benefit of knowing the actor — Gregg Berger — and knowing that he can look at something like that and do exactly what is necessary.)

You'll also notice one line of dialogue indicated as "B-Track."  A B-Track is a recording that the engineer keeps on a separate reel, or otherwise outside the main assembly of the voice track.  It's to give the editor who does the final edit of the show some vocal sounds that he or she can cut in, not necessarily at the precise point that it is indicated in the script.  There are also times when you indicate a B-Track because you have two actors speaking at the same time and you want them recorded separately so that either speech can be edited or filtered or have its volume adjusted.  In that case, you would denote one as a B-Track to make sure it is kept separate until the final edit or mix.

Lastly, some folks seem to wonder about the difference between "V.O." and "O.S.".  I use V.O. when the speaker is in another "place" and not in the scene — a narrator, for instance.  This becomes critical when that person is also in the scene...for instance, if Garfield were narrating a flashback sequence, but we also saw him in the story.  His narration would probably have a different tone and energy from any dialogue he had in the scene, so we put V.O. on the narrative lines to distinguish them.

"O.S." means "off-screen," meaning that the character is in the scene but, at the moment he speaks that line, I do not envision him being on-camera...or perhaps think it is important that he is not.  In the script you're about to read, when we first see the dilapidated airplane, I indicate Garfield's comment about it to be O.S. because I think we ought to be seeing the plane and not him when he says it.  The storyboard artist is, of course, free to disagree...and he will also probably have a lot of other lines spoken off-screen because he decides to put the "camera" on something other than the character speaking at that moment.

Near the end, I also indicate that the Air Traffic Controller's initial dialogue is O.S. because I want to establish the character and his role in the story before we see him.  We do a lot of "reveals" in animation — trying to eke out a gag or make a point by suddenly conveying some piece of visual information.  In this case, part of the joke is that the character is fat and eating, and I'm guessing that it will play better to establish his presence in the story first and then reveal that info.

Obviously, there are other ways to do this...to do everything in this script.  This, for whatever it's worth, is merely the way I did it on this one episode.  Don't give it — or any other script you may read — any more importance than that.  I hope this is informative.

And now, you can click here to read Skyway Robbery.  Have a nice flight.

Garfield and related characters © 2010 Paws, Inc.