Montage Formatting

[indiemcguffin]

Hey guys,

I'm working on a feature script and need to figure out how to format a rather lengthy montage. It could be anywhere from 5-10 minutes of screen time and the footage would be from news and media from the last 30 years or so.

It seems like the formatting of: MONTAGE - DESCRIPTOR followed by a listing of events is insufficient for the size of the montage. Same for: SCENE HEADING, action, SCENE HEADING, action, etc etc.

Additionally, there will be a voice over for the duration.

Any help would would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!
Geoff

[NikeeGoddess]

Additionally, there will be a voice over for the duration.this makes you montage sound boring... and 10 minutes of that?!!! i'd find a way to do without voice over. let the quality and formation of the scenes tell the audience everything.

idea/suggestion - call it a montage "tree" - because each scene branches off from the previous one. they're all connected and rooted with the same theme.
- someone watches news footage
- go to the POV of someone in the news (could be the reporter if you not shooting the footage yourself or using some kind of stock)
- pull out and a different person is watching the news
- that person makes phone call to someone
- that someone is at a different scene
- then pull into that scene
- etc,

get my drift? make it more interesting.

btw - the best montage i've seen was in the graduate. it moves benjamin from lounging in the swimming pool, to walking into the house... into the hotel... back home in the dining room then watching tv... close on the tv... pull back and he's watching tv in the hotel room... mrs robinson (half dressed) blocks his view of the tv... she gets dressed and leaves... he moves to the window and it's his (back home) bedroom window... ben goes out to the pool and dives in... he resurfaces and comes out with a leap onto mrs. robinson in the hotel bed...

it's a long montage but so very, very interesting

[icerose]

Out of curiosity why do you need 5-10 minutes of a montage? I would strongly suggest finding a movie that employs what you're looking for, and read the script. See how they handle it.

I would also suggest cutting it way way back, because ten solid pages of a montage would probably lose about 99.999% of your readers. The other .001% might slag through it to see where you go with it.

[indiemcguffin]

Yeah, I know it sounds long (and potentially boring). It could very well be less, but that's why I'm not sure about formatting. I feel like while the descriptions of clips to be used may be short it could run long (I know I don't need to fill up 10 pages of my script with descriptors). As this is an idea I'm just starting to play around with it could very well be crunched to a minute. Who knows.

The best example I can think of is Epic 2015 (http://youtube.com/watch?v=0fUHtc37MC8) though it certainly wouldn't be as hypnotic and slow, or the Europe scene in Rules of Attraction. There's informative narrative over a series of images that no one would be able to decipher with out the voice over. As for mine, I hadn't considered NOT having the voice over, but I think it's a situation where the content itself wouldn't carry the story otherwise.

Still trying to decide what the best way to write it is. Thanks again and suggestions are appreciated!

[icerose]

The basic montage formatting is

MONTAGE - NO SOUND

-- The ambulance pulls up to the scene.

-- EMT’s run for it, hauling their kits.

-- Angie’s strapped on the stretcher, they lift her off the ground.

-- They slide Angie into the ambulance. Drake tries to climb in, the EMT motions him back.

-- The ambulance drives away. Drake runs his blood stained hands through his hair, and looks up at the sky.

-- Angie opens her eyes in the ambulance for a moment and stares at a distant corner.

-- The ambulance skids onto a helicopter pad. The helicopter blades are spinning.

-- Angie’s stretcher is loaded into the medevac.

-- Tabitha climbs into the medevac helicopter. The EMT inside motions “no” with his arms.

-- Tabitha sits next to Angie, ignoring the EMT.

-- A ground EMT slides the door closed.

END MONTAGE

I guess that's part of why I'm freaking out at the idea of five to ten full pages of just this.

[WriteKnight]

Are you discussing a MONTAGE or a SERIES OF SHOTS?

Many people confuse the two. A montage will use effects, (Think of the Indiana Jones montage when he gets on the plane, we see the graphic of the map with the red line moving across it,) Dissolves, wipes, spinning newspapers, flying calendar pages, superimpositions - things like that.

If you're stringing together a series of shots to compress time - then slug it SERIES OF SHOTS

[icerose]

Very true, I'll have to fix that in mine.

[WriteKnight]

Meh. Its not a deal-breaking rule, more of a 'guideline'.

[FTL]

The basic montage formatting is

MONTAGE - NO SOUND..........


Sounds fine cept I would take out the '--' parts

[icerose]

Sounds fine cept I would take out the '--' parts

Hmm that's the only way I've seen it done in scripts.