Many times the deliverable is written as a CDSL or even a CCDSL.
The problem lies with the language. And frankly, we don’t blame anyone. These terms are interchangeable since they both make sense. The difference between a CDSL and a CCSL is that the CDSL does not have ‘action continuity’. Action continuity is the scene by scene, shot by shot description of the action on the screen. So each visual is described from one cut to the next.
This changes everything as it involves a lot more work.
A CDSL is a short form for ‘Combined Dialogue and Spotting List’. Whereas, the term CCSL stands for Combined Continuity and Spotting List’.
The confusing part is that a CCSL also has the dialogue list built into it.
Frankly, it is very confusing and sometimes it even leaves us quite at a loss. The simplest way to describe the difference between the two is that a CCSL contains scene descriptions and a CDSL does not. They are identical in all other respects. But that little difference is a huge difference.
Scene description means that each and every scene is described in words by a writer. We went a step further and started to describe each and every cut. So our description starts from the first frame to the last frame of a cut (or a dissolve)e