Think of the last time you ran on a track. (Yes… like a regular running track like the ones you had in high school.) Did you run around the circular track endlessly until you felt tired and decided to stop with no idea of how far you’ve gone? Probably not. Chances are, you counted laps.

Film productions have their own way of “counting laps” as well. They are called revision colors. Every time a change is made to the script / schedule, production prints the changes on different colored paper. This is especially helpful for the script supervisor, because they know which pages have been revised and which version they’re reading, just based on the color of the paper.

The same concept applies to schedule documents, such as one-liners or call sheets. So if the pink one-liner has just been published and you see someone reading the now out-dated white schedule, you can yank it from their hands and yell at them like they’re a fool. (Actually, probably don’t do that.)

There is a standard order for these revision colors. According to the WGA west, the standard script revision color sets are:

White (unrevised) Blue Pink Yellow Green Goldenrod* Buff Salmon Cherry Second Blue Revision Second Pink Revision and so on…

*Everything after goldenrod gets kinda hazy…

Many productions never make it that far. Most copy shops don’t even have ‘cherry’ or ‘salmon’ paper in stock. The important thing is that everyone knows what color is next. The title page should list all the revision dates and colors in order. Each revised page should note the color and date next to the page number at the top. For example: PINK 11/19/2012 – p.56

Most Script Supervisors request a WHITE COPY of the revision. Since their work often gets copied and scanned every day, colored paper won’t work for Script Supervisors. This is why having the color name written on the page is imperative.

Please note that many television shows now use their own revision sets so the above color sequence or wording may not be used by all productions.

Don’t ask us who came up with these colors / orders or how they became industry standard. These are the rules, so just deal.