What does a script editor do?

At the point I become attached to a project, there is usually a script, or sometimes several drafts of a script. I bring an objective eye, read the existing script or scripts and any other material – for example, a book or play the script might be based on. I am then able to have a clearer view of what’s going on with the project, and what needs to be done next. Sometimes, if a team has been working intensively over several drafts, they simply can’t see the wood for the trees. The reality of developing scripts is that a lot of people will have a lot of opinions, especially if they are putting money into them. A universal truth I have discovered over the years is this: if you ask someone their opinion on a script, they will give you one. They might have a point, or they might not. The team/writer will try to respond to all the voices – sometimes in the process losing the very core of what they were trying to say in the first place. Part of my job is to help sift through all the feedback, keeping what’s useful and putting aside what is not.

As an example, I was brought in on a project that had gone through seven drafts of the script and still wasn’t working. The whole team were pulling their hair out. Coming fresh to it, once I read all the drafts, I could immediately pinpoint the issue. The story was based around a friendship between two teenage boys – that was meant to be at the heart of it. But by the time they had got to draft seven of a 90-page script, the two main characters had an argument on page 20, then didn’t speak or share a scene again until page 80. When I asked the writer, director and producer about this, they were completely oblivious. They’d been so busy responding to feedback and ‘fixing things that they had forgotten what they had lost. Things then started to shift.

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Sara Harper Barnes is a script editor and story consultant working on UK and international film and TV projects. She previously worked in development for Twentieth Century Fox Productions and Manifesto Film Sales, then as production executive at British Screen and the UK Film Council on titles including Last of the Mohicans, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Gosford Park. She regularly works with Amsterdam-based Ateliers du Cinéma Européen (ACE) on their international producers’ workshops. Most recently, Sara has been working on an original feature written by bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith.