Not as much as you might think!
This is one area where a SCREENPLAY is very different from a novel.
Your experience with your novel, no doubt, has taught you that long and detailed desriptions about your location adds to the story. In fact, novelists like James Mitchner could make the detail descriptions of location the whole STORY of his novels.
I see screenwriting as being more subtle. First: Formatting prevents long detailed description of settings. That is customarily left to people like Production Designers, Set Designers, Wardrobe/Costume Designers and most importantly THE DIRECTOR.
I see the SCREENWRITER'S job is to reflect that setting through the emotions and dialogue of his characters. For example a man coming out of a chilly rain is likely to be cranky. His answers are likely to be short, perhaps even sarcastic. That is an example of a character reflecting his setting.
A novelist might have three pages of description of how his character is walking in a swirling rain on a chilly night. In fact for those three pages the setting becomes BIGGER than the character.
I think the screenwriter MUST possess an understanding of his setting but I believe it is nowhere nearly as important to creating a good story as it is for the novelist. There are movies made where the setting is paramount.
The 2007 movie: ATONEMENT for EXAMPLE. In this case, I'm sure that the novel on which that movie was based was used by THE DIRECTOR to present those vivid settings. It is likely why so many good movies made today are made about novels. There is so much more information in a novel, that cannot be fit into a traditionally formatted screenplay.
I suspect once the decision to make the movie was made by The Producers and a Diredtor is chosen then the detail in the novel becomes an additional resource,
The novelist has license to ramble where the screenwriter is constrained by formatting.
JUST MY OPINION ~ GOOD LUCK! ~ WRITE ON!
"It's never too late to become what you might have been."
- George Eliot
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