Just a quick bit of advice really. When writing a screenplay, does the time of day matter. An example of I am writing about an underground bunker where the time of day is irrelevant or if I was to keep the time of day a mystery is putting DAY/NIGHT really needed?
Screenwriting : Time of day for screenplays. by Ben Madeley
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Ben, If you have one hour watch our film on Amazon Prime, Marked for Trade you can see how many scenes we did at different times of the day. On the screenplay you may not need to list the time of day, but the scene certainly gave clues to when it was. Be sure to watch carefully, you will pick this up quickly I'm sure. Best, Editor Karen Blaney
Personally Ben Madeley If I'm writing a scene where we aren't aware of the outside, then I won't include the time of day. For instance, my script "Catch 22", there's a scene where our protagonist is held up in a solitary confinement cell, before that he was blacked out, so we're in the same position as him not knowing what's going on. So I didn't include the time of day, because the audience themselves does not have that information by sight.
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They have to know if it is going to be a day shoot or a night shoot. If the scene takes place deep inside a cave they can shoot it anytime they want so you would not use DAY or NIGHT in your scene heading. Example INT. CAVE is all you would write.
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Think of it from the Camera’s point of view.
Day (that light looks the same all day)
Night ( that looks the same all night)
Dusk (this is different to day and night)
Dawn (different to the other three as well).
That’s all of them. If the lens can’t see it. It’s unimportant.
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Thanks everyone for all the comments, this has really helped!
How important is it to the characters? Are they trying to keep some regular day or night schedule? Thinking like stories on space ships or station will keep some sort of regular schedule.