AV Scripts: The Two-Column Format for Commercials and Corporate Work

An AV script is a two-column document: video on the left, audio on the right, with the rows aligned so that everything in one row happens at the same time. It is the standard format for commercials, corporate video, explainers, training films, documentary, museum pieces and public information films, which between them are how most working filmmakers make a living.

VIDEO                      | AUDIO
---------------------------|------------------------------
Wide. Empty factory floor. | VO: In 1974, this building
Slow push in.              | employed four hundred people.
---------------------------|------------------------------
CU. Rusted time clock,     | VO: By 1989, it employed none.
hands stopped.             |
---------------------------|------------------------------

Two columns instead of one, and the change is not cosmetic. It reflects a different relationship between sound and picture.

Why the format is different

In a screenplay, picture leads. The scene happens in a place, people speak inside it, and sound is a consequence of the action.

In most non-narrative work, audio leads. A voiceover, an interview, or a client-approved script exists first, its length is fixed, and the picture is assembled to support it. You are not writing a place where things happen; you are writing a spine of sound and deciding what the audience looks at while they hear it.

A two-column page makes that relationship visible. You can read straight down the audio column to hear the whole film, read down the video column to see it, and read across any row to check that the two agree.

Screenplay format cannot show this. Trying to write a corporate film in screenplay format produces a document where the voiceover is buried in action paragraphs and nobody can tell what is on screen during the third sentence.

When to use which

Use screenplay format for: narrative fiction of any length, scripted drama, and anything with characters speaking to each other in a scene.

Use AV format for: commercials, corporate and brand films, explainers, training, documentary (especially narration-led), PSAs, museum and exhibition pieces, e-learning, and most social video.

Genuinely mixed projects exist, and the usual solution is to write the dramatized scenes in screenplay format as inserts inside an AV structure, or simply to write the whole thing in AV and put dialogue in the audio column.

The deciding question is: does the audience follow a story through a place, or does the audience follow an argument through information? The first wants one column, the second wants two.

Building rows

The row is the unit. Getting the granularity right is most of the craft.

One row per idea, not per shot. A row can hold "three shots of the production line, increasing pace". Splitting that into three rows adds nothing except length. Conversely, a row containing an entire two-minute section is not a row, it is an outline.

For a 60-second commercial, expect roughly 8 to 15 rows. For a five-minute corporate film, 25 to 50.

Number your rows. This is what everyone in the process will refer to. "Can we change row 12" is a sentence that gets said forty times on a corporate job, and it beats "the bit about the warehouse".

Add a duration column. Optional in principle, essential in practice. Three columns: number, video, audio, plus a duration. The durations must add up to the required total, and a script whose durations do not add up is a problem you want to find on the page and not in the edit.

Writing the video column

Concrete, brief, and free of camera novels.

• Say the shot size when it matters. WIDE, MID, CU. Skip it when it does not.
• Say what we see, not what it means. "Hands sorting components" and not "a sense of craftsmanship".
• Note graphics and text on screen explicitly. Lower thirds, captions, logo timings. These are frequently the thing the client cares most about and the thing most often left out of the script.
• Mark archive, stock and animation distinctly from originated footage, because they are different budget lines and different lead times.
• Keep it to two or three lines per row. If a row needs a paragraph, it is more than one row.

Writing the audio column

Label the source of every sound. The common markers:

• VO: voiceover, recorded separately.
• SYNC: or SOT: someone speaking on camera, in sync. In documentary, interview material.
• MUSIC: with a description of intent, not a track you have not cleared.
• SFX: effects that matter.
• ATMOS: background sound.

Write voiceover the way it will be spoken. Read every line aloud, because a voiceover script has no other test. Long subordinate clauses that read acceptably on a page are unspeakable in a booth, and you will find out at the worst moment.

For documentary, the audio column often holds paper edits of real interview material: the transcribed quote you intend to use, with timecode. This is how a documentary script actually functions, since you are assembling from material that already exists rather than specifying material to be shot.

What it turns into

An AV script is not just a writing document, and this is the part people underuse.

Because each row already specifies what is seen and heard, it converts almost directly into production paperwork:

• The video column is a shot list, once you group rows by location.
• Rows tagged by location become your shooting day groupings.
• Rows requiring talent, props, or specific access are your breakdown elements, exactly as in narrative breakdown.
• The audio column is your record session, and the word count is its duration.
• Rows marked as graphics or animation are a post schedule that can start before the shoot.

A corporate film with 40 rows might shoot in two days across four locations, and the grouping that tells you that is already sitting in your script.

Client approval, which is the real reason for the format

One practical point that nobody mentions in craft discussions: the two-column script is the document a client signs off.

That is why the format is so rigid, why rows are numbered, and why durations are specified. It is a contract about what will be delivered, in a form a non-filmmaker can read. A client can read the audio column and check the messaging. Their legal team can check the claims. Their brand people can check the logo timing.

Which means changes arrive as row numbers, and version control matters as much as it does with colored pages. Date every version, keep the row numbers stable across revisions, and mark what changed.

Next

That closes the chapter on the script itself. Chapter 3 begins the work of turning a finished script into a plan: the breakdown, and the moment a screenplay stops being writing and starts being a production.