Hi, I'm at the end of my script where I'm formatting an ending montage, it's the type of montage that would have a non diegetic music track overplaying throughout but I still want to go in some detail to the scenes. At first I tried doing a INT. LOCATION - LOCATION for each scene of it but that seems to be just wasting pages, it would be a rather fast montage but still the detail is relevant for understanding purposes. I'm sure there's a simple way to format something like this but I'm a little lost! Any help would be great!!

Quoted from kev Hi, I'm at the end of my script where I'm formatting an ending montage, it's the type of montage that would have a non diegetic music track overplaying throughout but I still want to go in some detail to the scenes. At first I tried doing a INT. LOCATION - LOCATION for each scene of it but that seems to be just wasting pages, it would be a rather fast montage but still the detail is relevant for understanding purposes. I'm sure there's a simple way to format something like this but I'm a little lost! Any help would be great!!

The proper way, and most screenwriting apps don't allow for it, is like such...

INT. LOCATION - DAY

    (A) Man walks on a beach with
           beautiful woman at sunset.
    (B) Man shops for wedding ring
           at upscale jewler.
    (C) Man proposes to woman.

Each scene you put down, be it numbered or lettered, has to be under the scene header period. And most importantly, what every screenwriter always forgets, is that the sentences have to be aligned like the above.   I've read too many scripts where writer get clever, rather thinks they are, and never get this right.  

They end up doing it like this.

INT. LOCATION. DAY

(A) Man walks on a beach with beautiful
woman at sunset.

That's wrong.  The sentence cannot fall underneath the (A) and the (A) cannot fall under the INT.  And last but not least --> Screenwriting software, outside Movie outline; which is the best, does not account for this.  You have to adjust this yourself.

Thanks a lot, that really helped!

Quoted from Baltis. The proper way, and most screenwriting apps don't allow for it, is like such... INT. LOCATION - DAY     (A) Man walks on a beach with            beautiful woman at sunset.     (B) Man shops for wedding ring            at upscale jewler.     (C) Man proposes to woman. Each scene you put down, be it numbered or lettered, has to be under the scene header period. And most importantly, what every screenwriter always forgets, is that the sentences have to be aligned like the above.   I've read too many scripts where writer get clever, rather thinks they are, and never get this right.   They end up doing it like this. INT. LOCATION. DAY (A) Man walks on a beach with beautiful woman at sunset. That's wrong.  The sentence cannot fall underneath the (A) and the (A) cannot fall under the INT.  And last but not least --> Screenwriting sooftware, outside Movie outline; which is the best, does not account for this.  You have to adjust this yourself.

Thanks Balt. Just from a Feng Shui point of view, the positioning as you've described makes me feel so much better.   :)

Sandra

I think ideally you would use full scene headings for each location in the montage.  But if each location is rather brief, you can try alternative formatting methods to make the read fluid, just as long as what we're supposed to be seeing is clear to the reader:

INT/EXT.  VARIOUS LOCATIONS - MONTAGE

Brief description of montage.

LOCATION 1: Something happening.

LOCATION 2: Night time.  Something happening.

etc.

Or perhaps:

MONTAGE OF SOMETHING

--Character at LOCATION doing this and that.

--Character again at LOCATION, night time now, doing this.

CHARACTER
Saying something.

--Different character doing this at LOCATION.

END OF MONTAGE

Or you could try mini-slugs.

John August gives a cool alternative:
http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/formatting-a-montage-sequence
Which I've seen used before a few times in scripts.

Thanks for all that information guys, helped a lot with my script! I don't use this screenwriting class area enough!