I have a question about going from live action, then breaking away for a small cartoon, and then coming back to the scene again. The only examples I know of is One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead. Not anything like Cool World or Who Framed Roger Rabbit where live action takes place in a cartoon.

Would it be an insert or would you just describe the cartoon as if it were a scene, with a slug line and everything? What's the proper way to handle that?

Are you referring to the characters watching a cartoon on television?  Or a segment where a cartoon tells the story?

If it's the prior, you simply state what's on the television.  If it's the latter (I'm guessing here) that you use INSERT as you cut into the scene and BACK TO when you go back to live action.


Phil

It's not on T.V. It basically just breaks away from the live action conversation completely into a it's own little skit. It would be as if a Bugs Bunny cartoon was just spliced into a regular movie for fifteen seconds. I was thinking that Insert would probably be the way to go too.

If I know what you are talking about, I would just simply write INT. LIVING ROOM - LIVE ACTION. But I've never written a cartoon so I wouldn't know either, but that is what I will do. I might be wrong, so when this question is answered correctly, I'll know what to do if I decide to write my own cartoon.

Sean

If you mean like in Kill Bill Vol. 1, I would probably write it as its own scene.  Treat it like a flashback - a scene during another scene.  Then again, because you don't need to actually shoot it, having a slugline might confuse people.  I would write a slugline, and let whoever writes the shooting script work it out.

Quoted from jerdol If you mean like in Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Yeah, that's basically what it's like. The only thing is that as in Kill Bill it was basically used as a flashback to tell the story, mine's just a little humorous skit and it's a lot shorter. So that's why I'm in a quandry. I think I will just write it as a scene.

Here's how it was written in the Kill Bill script:

OVER BLACK
TITLE CARD:
      Chapter Four
   "SHOWDOWN at HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES"

     CUT TO:

A BLANK PIECE OF DRAWING PAPER
A hand comes in and, as the Bride talks over this image,
draws with a piece of charcoal, a portrait of the geisha
regaled O-REN ISHII.

               THE BRIDE          (V.O.)
     When fortune smiles on something as
     violent and ugly as revenge, at the
     time it seems proof like no other,
     that not only does God exist,
     you're doing his will. At a time
     when I knew the last about my
     enemies, the first name on my death
     list, was the easiest to find. But
     of course, when one manages the
     difficult task of becoming queen of
     the Tokyo underworld, one doesn't
     keep it a secret, does one?

The charcoal drawing gets color and becomes ANIMATED, turning
into a JAPAMATION O-REN...

JAPANESE ANIMATION SEQUENCE
We see Japamation-style images of The Bride's verbiage.

               THE BRIDE          (V.O.)
     At the age of twenty, Bill backed
     his Nippon progeny financially and
     philosophically in her
     Shakespearian-in-magnitude power
     struggle with the other Yakuza
     clans, over who would rule vice in
     the city of Tokyo.

Japamation images of O-Ren and her Army, taking on ANOTHER
YAKUZA ARMY, among falling cherry blossoms.

WE CUT BACK AND FORTH between cartoon images of this and the
real life real McCoy samurai sword battle.

O-Ren's ability is simply amazing.

               THE BRIDE          (V.O.)
     When it was all over, it was the
     geisha-regaled O-Ren Ishii that
     proved the victor.

INT. JAPANESE NIGHT CLUB


- This is similar, but not exact. And it is Tarantino, who has the freedom to write however he wants most likely. So, I guess I'll just wing it and describe it if all else fails to reveal the "proper" way to do it. People will still understand.