Changing Scenes is Impossible!

Why do I feel like plenty of other people have already asked about this…

So I’m trying to write my first story, and I was all excited until I reached a part where, after a short intro in the black background, I can’t figure out how to move into the next scene/background smoothly, like with a transition. I’m trying to get it to fade in but no matter what I do it won’t accept it.

So here’s what my scripting for the transition currently looks like:
transition fade in black
INT. ITALIAN RESTAURANT OL - NIGHT
@ROXANNA changes into ROXANNA_outing

And here’s the error response I keep getting:
Expected dialog, found “transitionfadeinblack” instead. Did you forget to capitalize the first word in the sentence?

I do have the transition command right after some narrator dialog, but I tried spacing it out and I get the same thing. What do I have to do to make a clean, smooth change of scenes?!

SCENE 1
@transition fade out black 2

SCENE2
&CHARACTER stands screen center
@transition fade in black 2

Put the fade in after your location.

Ex.

INT.ITALIAN RESTAURANT OL - NIGHT
@transition fade in back

Also you need to remember to use @ before

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Oh, of course. How did I overlook that? Thank you guys. Seems to be fixed now.

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So I guess since I don’t want to fill up too much space with pointless questions in new threads, I guess I’ll post all my questions here. Another problem I’ve come across is having a person talk from offscreen. Like, if person one asks to enter a room, they would do so from offscreen, then after getting the second person’s approval they would enter the room. I tried it, and it just resulted Person One standing at the far left until her cue to move to upscreen left. Is there any other way to do this?

You have to place your character offscreen first. So if you’re in zone 2, place your character in zone 1 if you want them to enter from the left, or in zone 3 if you want them to enter from the right. If you’re in zone 1 and you want them to enter from the left, you have to spot place your character to the left using spot direction. Use this: @CHARACTER spot 1.28 -100 0 in zone 1

Closing due to inactivity :slight_smile: