INT. LARGE SITTING ROOM IN A MANSION IN ENGLAND - DAY WE HEAR CLASSICAL MUSIC being PLAYED on a PIANO. WE SEE a PAINTING on a wall of a little blond girl holding a doll and sitting on a gold chair. WE SEE VARIOUS ART OBJECTS on tables and SEVERAL CANES against the wall. Next to a FIREPLACE leans a very exquisite DIAMOND-STUDDED and RUBY WALKING STICK. At the opposite end of the room is a HIGH-BACK LEATHER CHAIR next to a SMALL TABLE. A very thin, distinguished gray-haired servant named NIGEL ENTERS CARRYING A TRAY with a TEAPOT, CUP AND SAUCER, PITCHER, and SEVERAL PINE CONES on it with a NEWSPAPER UNDER HIS ARM. He walks over to the piano.
There are many things wrong with the writing here:
I would rewrite this as follows:
INT. ENGLISH MANSION - SITTING ROOM - DAY The room is large, expensively decorated, with a fireplace. Someone is playing classical music on a piano. NIGEL, a servant, enters with a tray for tea-time. He marches to the piano.
See the incredible difference? In fiction, we depend on rhetoric to set the scene -- but in a movie, the camera will set the scene. The writer's job is to simply tell the story, simply. The writer is not the set designer and "expensively decorated, with a fireplace" is the only clue that is needed. Now if certain objects, just as the walking stick, have dramatic importance in the story, then there is justification for mentioning them. Otherwise only present the essentials.
9/00