It was while visiting the set of Chariots of Fire that I saw my future. Getting there was not easy, nor was it fast. While watching the production, the one person on the set whose job I felt closest to was the lady with the script on her hip, Kay Rawlings. She was always a few steps behind or next to the director, Hugh Hudson. I learned later that this was the script supervisor, and she was the director's constant companion. Whenever there was a huddle of key people, she was in the middle of it all. The actors, the director, the DP, the operator, the sound recordist and the script supervisor were all talking together. Then I noticed the producer, David Putnam, walk onto the set and join them. That day changed the direction of my life. I was 16. Little did I know that nine years later I would be following Stanley Kubrick around the made-up battlefields and bombed-out buildings on the set of Full Metal Jacket. What began as a three-month engagement working with Kubrick turned into a full 12-month project that raised my career possibilities. I was then the youngest script supervisor working in England.

When I first started in the business, I would have given my eyeteeth for some kind of training. The only option was to get a job assisting a script supervisor on a film or commercial. After knocking on doors, writing letters and making many phone calls, I finally got my break from a producer who took pity on me (so I thought) and offered me the script supervisor's position on a film he was about to make. Little did I know that I would be working with kids and animals-or that the salary was non-existent. It didn't matter to me as I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I reread (for the thousandth time) the only book on the market at that time, written by Avril Rowlands, called Script Continuity and the Production Secretary in Film and TV and thought I knew everything that would take me through the next four weeks.

The first week was sheer hell. The second week wasn't much better. The third week seemed to ease up a little and by the fourth week I was just starting to enjoy it as I began to understand my role in the moviemaking process. Perseverance was the only thing that got me through the hardest four weeks of my career, but I learned a lot in a very short time.

Within three weeks of wrapping that project, I was packing my bags and leaving for France . Soon afterward I landed Full Metal Jacket, then Willow with Ron Howard directing and George Lucas producing, Memphis Belle, Jude and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

After five years I thought I knew everything there was to know about script supervising. When I reached my tenth year, I realized that only then did I know what makes a good script supervisor.

Working for Kubrick I learned what a perfectionist really is. During the scenes in the barracks I had to make sure the beds were a certain distance apart from each other and from the walls so that they were in exactly the same spot each time we walked onto the set, down to the last tenth of an inch! I learned that photographic evidence (an SX-70 Polaroid) was invaluable, for it helped everyone on the set achieve continuity, which is one of the jobs a script supervisor does. During the many takes in the barracks scenes on Full Metal Jacket, it was my responsibility to ensure the costumes on the soldiers were the same for each shot, and that the length of an actor's hair was the same. I found that Polaroids put a stop to arguments between the various departments on set, costume, props, make-up and hair. After all, how else could you tell how long somebody's hair was at the back unless you had a photograph to look at?

Julie Ann Robinson sits alongside director James Dearden on the set of A Kiss Before Dying (1991).

Despite the 'art of script supervising,' actual photographs do help us remember the positioning of props and wardrobe, make-up and hair. I found the use of Polaroids was an invaluable tool on one film I worked on when we had three weeks of shooting in New York. When we returned to England one of the close-up shots of the leading lady had an emulsion scratch through the entire take. We weren't able to return the whole crew to the location, but we were able to re-stage the scene in England with the aid of my Polaroids.

During the shooting of a film, I pay closest attention to the details in each shot. I note the smallest action, when it happened and where and how the actors were standing, sitting and moving, as well as the positioning of the props. As much of what the camera saw and heard would be written down for immediate and later reference in order to keep continuity from shot to shot and scene to scene. Part of this can be learned; some of it needs to be acquired through experience. But the better script supervisors take to the role naturally; they have a gene for observation, detail and organization. We're just born that way.

A script supervisor is more than the director's secretary. They are there to aid the director in the making of the film, to ensure the finished film flows in continuous action as if it had been shot in real time, in shot and scene order, without any mistakes normally caused through 'out of sequence' shooting. The script supervisor makes notes for the editors, gives actors their lines, times each shot and watches to make sure the director and camera do not "cross the line." He or she keeps the director honest to the script, reminds everyone of what shot is next, ensures that all the shots written are in the can and then watches to be sure there is continuity between shots.

The script supervisor's job begins well before production starts. A week before a major feature begins shooting, I will read and digest the script. I have to know the script as if I'd seen it as a finished film a dozen times. While reading the script I also time it-each scene is timed with a stopwatch as I see it play out in my head. Then, once filming is underway, I time each scene with my stopwatch, checking to see that each one does not go over the desired running length.

During pre-production, I also prepare a continuity script breakdown. I will use this breakdown during production as a reference. This is a great help when the director asks: "Do the doors open before the music starts or after?" or "Does the actress have her hair short or long in the three scenes we're shooting today?" My breakdown will give me the answer in seconds.

On Four Weddings and a Funeral, we filmed so many church scenes it was even difficult for me to keep all the shots in order. One day the director asked me if the congregation had been standing or sitting at a certain point in the scene as he was preparing to set up the next shot. I blurted out in haste that they were standing. Then I checked my notes and saw they were in fact sitting so I said "No sorry, they're sitting." The next thing I heard was him shouting at the top of his voice: "Were they standing or sitting??" This, of course, made me doubt myself and I just had to double-check my notes before finally shouting out again "Yes, they were sitting." It had been a long day and the director had had enough. He was under a huge amount of pressure trying to fit everything he had to shoot into each day, but he managed and we made an amazing film.

It's a good feeling to be able to sit next to a director, and when you both see something that doesn't feel right, look at each other and realize the same thing. It may be an actor's look is off, or he misses a piece of dialogue, or he sits down in a matching shot much later than in previous shots and you both realize there will be a problem in editing. "Cut!" The director brings the mistake to the actor's attention, "Back to number one," shouts the AD. "Sound. Camera. Action." And we are off again.

My job is to catch mistakes in continuity, dialogue, even performance and camera placement-and point out these errors to the director. It is the director's responsibility to make the correction. The really experienced director will be able to tell if the mistake is going to be a problem for the editor. Good directors welcome this input, expect and demand it. The less experienced directors, of which there are many, may ignore the crew's suggestions and the film suffers for it in editing.

I have worked with directors who did not understand the craft of moviemaking, but knew how to direct actors. I have worked with directors who knew what they were doing technically, but didn't have a clue about working with actors. And I have worked with directors who knew the craft of moviemaking entirely. These directors were a dream to work with.

A good script supervisor needs to be knowledgeable but a diplomat. You not only need to know how films are made, you need to understand the dynamics of each scene. You need to know that each scene is made up of shots which, when edited together, will form a seamless flow of action that tells a story. This is the magic of film.

more than 20 feature films, a few TV series and hundreds of TV commercials later, I have hung up my stopwatch, turned in my stool and become a full-time mother to a daughter and son. But as I look back on my 17 years as a script supervisor I realize it was a fantastic period of my life. There were weeks spent filming in the desert; dodging elephants in the jungle; filming at Raffles in Singapore; visiting Monument Valley and the Arches; shooting in Paris, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand and all over Europe. I have worked with directors and producers such as Ron Howard, Stanley Kubrick, James Dearden, Mike Figgis, George Lucas, David Putnam and actors like Matthew Modine, Sean Young, Rod Steiger, Hugh Grant, Sir John Gielgud, Stephanie Powers and Andie MacDowell. I have been ferried by helicopter to snow-covered mountains to shoot a film, living under canvas in the desert, seen all the wild animals come down to the watering hole, listened to the monkeys during a night in the jungle and flown in a B-52 bomber. Although my time is now devoted to my family, my gift back to the industry is in teaching the course I wished was in existence when I first started as a script supervisor. MM

Julie Ann Robinson now teaches a one-week workshop for script supervisors at the International Film & Television Workshops in Rockport, Maine each summer.