What it looks like on the page
The number sits in both margins, level with the heading:
42 EXT. GAS STATION - NIGHT 42
Rain hammers the pumps. MAYA pulls up to pump 4.
Final Draft and the other common screenwriting programs add numbers from a menu and can lock them, so a later edit produces 42A and leaves everything after scene 42 alone.
Why the number is an ID
Everyone downstream uses the scene number as an address. The breakdown sheet for 42 lists its elements; the strip for 42 sits on the board for shoot day 11; the call sheet for day 11 lists scene 42; the slate reads "42" and a setup letter; the lined script and script supervisor's report track coverage under 42; the editor bins footage under 42. If a rewrite renumbered scenes, scene 42 would suddenly mean two different things across a stack of paperwork and hard drives.
That is why production numbering follows a few fixed rules once the script is locked:
| Change in revision | What happens to the numbers |
|---|---|
| New scene after 42 | becomes 42A (then 42B, 42C) |
| New scene before scene 1 | becomes A1 |
| Scene 57 deleted | "57 OMITTED" stays on the page |
| Scenes 60 and 61 merged | "60-61" or 61 marked OMITTED |
| Another new scene between 42A and 43 | becomes 42B |
See A-scenes and omitted scene for how each case looks on the page.
Scene numbers and secondary headings
What counts as a numbered scene depends on the slugline. Each master scene heading gets a number. Secondary headings inside a scene, like "KITCHEN" or "LATER", usually don't, though some writers number them and some ADs prefer that for scheduling. Decide before numbering, because a script where a chase through six rooms is one scene schedules differently from one where it's six.
Common confusion
Scene numbers are not shot numbers. A single scene can need a dozen setups (42, 42A, 42B on the slate in the lettered-setup system), and those letters are camera setups, which is different from an A-scene in the script. The script supervisor keeps the two straight. Our scene numbering rules post walks through edge cases, and script analysis reads existing numbers from an uploaded PDF.