GlossaryPage elements
Crawl
Also: text crawl · opening crawl
A crawl is a block of text that scrolls slowly up or across the screen, usually at the start of a film, to give the audience background before the story begins. Think of a space saga whose backstory scrolls off into the stars.
A crawl works when the audience needs a chunk of context that would be clumsy to explain in dialogue, like the state of a war or the rules of a world.
In the script, mark where it starts, write the text exactly as it should read, and keep it short. If it runs long, ask whether the first scene could show the same thing instead.
FADE IN: CRAWL: The colonies have gone silent. For three years no ship has returned from the outer ring...