Extremely cool! Thank you for a good look at how the intercuts would appear on the page. It brought to mind The Fugitive. If I remember correctly, the net-available script depicts each of the opening events separately, even though two of them occur concurrently. But the film is cut to show the inciting event and the entire set-up through intercuts -- and it's vastly more involving. Good to know and remember!

Scott -- Should we be concerned about, or at least aware of a "confusion threshold" that a gatekeeper reader will tolerate, in terms of how much cross-cutting of the visuals we incorporate on the page? Reading comprehension vs. visual comprehension -- two different speeds, two varied capacities. I understand that secondary slugs and crisp, clear writing are our best friends in pulling this off, but there comes a point when they're no match for a filmed sequence that is designed and shot to flow visually.

As a follow up, per Judy's point above, and perhaps even Darabont's similar choice at the writing stage of TSR -- perhaps there are times when it's better to side with creating a cohesive linear reading experience for the gatekeepers who are covering the script, rather than shoot for creating a fully realized cinematic depiction of a complex and/or layered sequence.

Judy, IIRC I believe you are right re The Fugitive. It makes sense to cut movies like that to make them more cinematic.

John, it's a fair question especially given how Hollywood is tending to use interns more and more for the first pass at covering scripts. Who knows how much training they have, let alone depth of experience watching movies and reading scripts? That said, as per the example in Shawshank, it's hard for me to imagine even an unschooled reader not being able to follow the cross-cuts. It's such a fundamental and oft-used narrative device, I should think even novice script readers would be able to grasp. More important, one of things you can do to demonstrate your chops as a professional caliber screenwriter is to write visually and write cinemetically. Whenever I see smart 'edits' in a script, whether it's cross-cuts or visual-to-visual transitions from one scene to the next, I give the writer points because that demonstrates a level of sophistication novice writers may not have. So while you may be right re not wanting to lose or confuse an inexperienced script reader, I think the ability to write cinematically and the value that can have in how you are perceived by established buyers / script readers outweighs the original concern. That's just my opinion. What do others think?