How to Format a Phone Call in a Screenplay

Choose the treatment before you write the dialogue

There are three accepted ways to put a phone call on the page, and the choice changes how you tag the cues, how many sluglines you write and whose lines the reader ever sees. Decide first, then write.

Intercut is the default for a feature: it is the only treatment that lets the audience watch both performances. Split screen is a stylistic commitment. One-sided is the cheapest to shoot, which is why it dominates shorts and low-budget features, and it is also the strongest choice when the other party's identity is a secret the scene is protecting.

INTERCUT: the standard treatment

The heading goes on its own line at the action margin, and the second location gets a full slugline immediately after it:

INT. MARA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT

Mara paces the length of the room, phone pressed to her ear,
Ben's duffel still by the door.

                      MARA
            Tell me you're not in the car.

                      BEN (FILTERED)
            I'm not in the car.

INTERCUT WITH:

INT. BEN'S CAR - NIGHT

Ben drives one-handed, phone on the seat beside him, speaker
on.

                      BEN
            I'm parked.

                      MARA
            You're parked.

INTERCUT WITH: is the common form; the colon is optional, and INTERCUT: on its own is also seen. What matters is that the heading is capitalized, sits on its own line, and is followed straight away by the slugline of the other location, complete with the same time of day as the first location, or CONTINUOUS if the cut is instantaneous.

Where the heading goes is a placement decision with one rule: as early as the reader needs to know that this scene has a second location. If the scene opens with a page of Mara alone and the intercut does not arrive until page three, the reader has been building the wrong picture of the scene. Most scripts either put it directly after the first exchange, as above, or immediately after the first slugline when the whole scene is the call. Declaring it late is the common mistake.

Once the intercut is declared, you are no longer writing two scenes. You are writing one scene with two locations, which is why the page numbers as one scene in the schedule and why the editor cuts between the two. When you switch back and forth after the second location has been established, repeat a slugline for each switch, using CONTINUOUS rather than a new time:

INT. BEN'S CAR - CONTINUOUS

Ben takes the exit at sixty.

INT. MARA'S APARTMENT - CONTINUOUS

Mara hears the engine through the receiver. Her face changes.

Some production drafts stop slugging after the heading and write INTERCUT AS NEEDED, which hands every remaining cut to the director and the editor and is common in shooting scripts and television. In a spec script, keep the sluglines: they are how the reader knows where they are, and they cost one line each.

Three or more locations are legal and occasionally necessary. Use the full list once, at the top, and label each location clearly the first time it appears:

INTERCUT BETWEEN MARA'S APARTMENT, BEN'S CAR AND THE 24TH
PRECINCT - NIGHT

For a spec, two locations is the working number. Each additional location is another slugline to keep straight and another set of faces the reader has to hold, and a call that spends its time establishing geography is a call that has stopped being dramatic. If you need a third, make sure the drama needs it.

Split screen: both parties in one frame

Split screen is a different thing from intercut, and the difference is real rather than cosmetic: in an intercut the two ends are separate coverage that gets cut together, while in a split screen both ends live inside a single frame and the audience sees them simultaneously.

The standard shorthand puts the instruction on the slugline with both locations separated by a slash:

SPLIT SCREEN: INT. MARA'S APARTMENT / INT. BEN'S CAR - NIGHT

Mara on the left, Ben on the right, both faces lit by phone
glow.

                      MARA
            Tell me you're not in the car.

                      BEN
            I'm parked.

Two details make the page readable. First, no cue extensions are needed while both parties are visible, because every voice belongs to a body on screen. Second, describe the geography once, in the first action line, so the reader can hold the halves: which character is on which side, and what the two frames look like. If the two characters talk over each other, that is dual dialogue inside the split frame.

Split screen earns its place when the simultaneity is the subject: two people in different cities whose matched routines are the point, a montage of parallel calls, or a visual device the film returns to. It is also a legitimate instruction in a shooting script, where the director is the audience.

Where it costs you is the spec script. A split screen is a visual decision, and readers vary in how they receive a writer who makes it. The dominant practice is to state it when the story needs the simultaneity, and not to reach for it as a way of avoiding an intercut heading. It is also worth knowing that a true split screen is harder to shoot and to cut than an intercut, because both halves have to be framed and matched; a director may quietly shoot it as an intercut anyway. For a montage of many calls, writers often widen the instruction instead: a series of split screens, or a split screen montage, with the individual pairs named in the action.

A split screen is not an intercut with a different label, and swapping one for the other mid-script will read as if you changed your mind about the scene. Choose per scene and stay with the choice.

One-sided calls: writing half a conversation the audience can follow

In a one-sided call the reader hears only one half. The craft problem is that the audience still has to understand what was said to your character, and the solution is to write the reaction rather than the reply.

There are three ways to handle the unseen half, and each one buys something different:

1. Only one side on the page. Write only the character we are with, and mark the convention once in the action: We hear only her half of the call. The audience infers the other half from what she answers.
2. The other party as V.O. They are heard but never seen, tagged (V.O.) or (FILTERED), and their lines are written out normally. The reader gets the whole exchange and the audience gets a voice without a face.
3. A third character in the room. If the audience has to know what was said, put someone beside your character and let them ask. It is the oldest solution to the problem and still the clearest.

A one-sided call with nothing but the visible half, using an action beat to carry the pause:

INT. HOSPITAL CORRIDOR - NIGHT

Mara walks, phone tight to her ear. We hear only her half of
the call.

                      MARA
            Say that again.

A nurse passes with a chart. Mara keeps walking.

                      MARA (CONT'D)
            You're sure it's hers.

The equivalent exchange with the other party tagged in, so the reader hears both ends:

                      BEN (V.O.)
            They found her car at the reservoir.

                      MARA
            And the keys?

                      BEN (V.O.)
            In the ignition.

Half a conversation works when the visible lines carry the missing ones. Four techniques do most of the work. Questions that contain their own answer (You're in the car). Restatement (So the deal is off). Refusal and interruption (No. Say it again). And reactions that land on a face rather than a line, which is what the camera is there for. What does not work is a run of bare questions, because the reader never learns what was said and the scene reads as a series of blanks waiting to be filled in by a later exposition scene.

There is a production reason this treatment is everywhere in shorts and low-budget features. A one-sided call needs one location, one actor on camera, and one voice recorded later, possibly by the writer. It is the cheapest phone scene in the medium, and it is also the standard fix when an actor cannot be on set for a day. That economy is not a compromise in a well-written scene: keeping the camera on one face during a call is often stronger than cutting away, because the audience is left to read what the character is being told.

V.O., O.S. and (FILTERED): tagging the voice at the other end

The tagging rules for a phone call are short, and the mistakes are made in the same two places every time.

• The character in the scene you are watching speaks with no tag. If we are in Mara's apartment and Mara is talking, her cue is MARA.
• A voice not in the scene is (V.O.) or (FILTERED). Both are correct for a caller. (FILTERED) is the more specific tag, because it says the voice is arriving through a device; some writers use it for the whole call, others only where the quality of the sound matters. (ON PHONE) is a common alternative and is fine as long as it is used consistently.
• Do not use (O.S.) for a caller. O.S. means the speaker is in this scene but out of frame, like someone shouting from the next room. Writing BEN (O.S.) while we are in Mara's apartment tells the reader Ben is in the room, which is false, and it changes what production thinks it has to schedule.
• In an intercut, the extensions usually disappear. Both characters are on screen in their own locations, so most scripts write plain cues for the duration of the intercut. A minority keeps (FILTERED) on whichever voice is currently coming out of a receiver, which is defensible but harder to hold straight. Either practice is fine; mixing the two inside one scene is not.
• One edge case breaks the pattern. If two characters are in the same house and one calls the other, the person we cannot see is (O.S.), not V.O., because they are inside the scene's space. The phone in the frame is a prop.
• Recordings and machines are V.O. A voicemail, an automated booking line, hold music, a message played back: BEN (V.O.), AUTOMATED VOICE (V.O.), RECORDED VOICE (V.O.). Name the source in the cue so the reader can hear it.
• An unknown caller keeps an unknown cue. CALLER (V.O.) or VOICE (V.O.) until the story identifies them, then switch to the name and use it from that page forward. The reader should never know more than the audience.

A voice that arrives before the cut to the location it belongs to is tagged (PRE-LAP), which is a sound instruction more than a location note: BEN (PRE-LAP) on the last line of the previous scene. It is common in shooting scripts and used sparingly in specs.

Common phone call mistakes

1. Tagging the unseen caller (O.S.). The most common error in the format. If the voice is at the other end of a line, it is V.O. or FILTERED; O.S. means the speaker is standing in the scene but outside the frame.
2. Declaring an INTERCUT and never cutting. If the heading promises a second location, the scene has to go there. A declaration with no cut reads as a leftover from a draft.
3. Contradictory times. One end slugged NIGHT and the other DAY for a call happening in real time. Match the time, or use CONTINUOUS. Time of day is a scheduling fact, not a mood.
4. Locations that drift. INT. MARA'S APARTMENT becomes INT. MARA'S LIVING ROOM for the same conversation. Two names for one room reads as two sets, and it costs you a location in the breakdown even if nobody notices the inconsistency.
5. An intercut where one end never appears. If both locations were declared, both have to show up on the page. Otherwise write the scene as one-sided and say so.
6. Unreadable labels. Five locations, no consistent naming, characters referred to by number in one place and description in another. The reader gives up and skims to the end of the call.
7. A one-sided call whose missing half cannot be reconstructed. The tell is a later scene where someone explains the phone call for the audience's benefit. Fix the call, not the explanation.
8. Two cues stacked with no location change. Writing both ends of a call as alternating cues inside one slugline leaves the reader unable to tell where either person is. Two speakers in two rooms need two locations on the page, marked by a heading or an intercut.
9. Exposition that only exists because phones exist. A call is often chosen as an easy way to have a character say information out loud that nobody would say to a person in the room. Readers can hear the machinery; if the information has to land, make the call carry a cost or a decision as well.
10. Ringing as a scene. Pages of a phone ringing and being answered before the conversation starts. Begin the call where the scene begins, which is usually mid-sentence.

Frequently asked questions

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