I've looked through the previous questions posted and have not seen anything relating how to write a musical. I haven't a clue about what to include throughout the script such as discription of what a character sings about or their action/dancing in a scene.I wish I had some truly insightful answers, but this is one subject I know little about. Burg & Myers wrote one script that took place during a single night at a rock concert and we made up bands along with a few key lyrics which we would simply insert as dialogue like this:
I'd appreciate any advice you may have on the subject.
BANDThe thing is, as I'm sure you've noticed, there aren't that many musicals - as movies - around anymore. Yes, there is the current film Nine. And there was Fame in 2009. Of course, all the High School Musical films. Chicago. Moulin Rouge. But nothing compared to the 30s, 40s, and 50s. I'm not saying that to knock the genre, but rather to provide credence to the difficulties you've had finding out information.
(singing song)
"The lyrics go here.
Do a hard break for the next line.
And a hard break for this one, too.
Then end with a quotation to signify...
The end of the verse or chorus."
A good place to start is here at the great screenplay site SimplyScripts.com. They have a whole section on musicals.
I just now had a thought. Dashed off onto the Web. And voila! Found something that might help you. What about the screenplay for The Lion King? Yes, it's animated, but it's a musical. And you can get a PDF of it here for the low, low price of zero dollars!
If you look at The Lion King, they do this to signify it's song-time:
SONG: "I JUST CAN'T WAIT TO BE KING"Notice three things: (1) They note that it's song-time by simply writing a Secondary Slugline (naturally in caps) with the word SONG, then song's title. (2) They cap the sung lyrics in dialogue. (3) And they extend the dialogue out all the way to scene description left and right margins.
Simba pounces Zazu playfully.
SIMBA
I'M GONNA BE A MIGHTY KING SO ENEMIES BEWARE!
Zazu jumps backwards up onto a log and falls into a knot-
hole.
ZAZU
I'VE NEVER SEEN A KING OF BEASTS WITH QUITE SO LITTLE HAIR.
That seems perfectly logical to me. And as you can see, they bounce back and forth between scene description and dialogue, just like non-singing action. Again the only distinction is the capped dialogue and extended margins.
That's my advice and I'm sticking to it!
How about you, GITS readers? Any of you writing or have written a musical for a movie? How did you approach it in terms of format and style?
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3 comments:
I've read a lot of movie musical scripts, from CHICAGO to THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA to SWEENEY TODD to NINE, and it seems to me that most of them never actually highlight the start of the song with a secondary slugline like THE LION KING does.
Most of them just add a note towards the beginning that suggests that sung material will be entirely capitalized, and spoken dialogue won't be. It sets a nice precedent for the rest of the script, particularly since many musicals these days are more "sung-through" (they often use music as dialogue in a pseudo-opera fashion) and thus don't necessarily have clear and defined song breaks.
I come at this from both the theater world and the film world. Pretty much you've said it -- slug, all caps, hard breaks for lyric lines.
Using the slug to show the start of music can be very helpful, especially to avoid confusion between singing and yelling. If a slug is used for start of song, it is often equally as helpful to use one to indicate end of song. (Especially given that dialogue often intertwines -- it is good to give the reader an indication that the song is done.)
One thing to keep in mind: the format plays havoc with page count -- what might be a minute of song may well take several pages of script (as opposed to the one page per minute of screen time idea). Rene Zellweger has the story of scratching her head trying to read the musical script for CHICAGO, hitting page after page of characters just repeating "He reached for, he reached for, he reached for the gun, the gun, the gun" etc.
Cheers all good advice so far and had been very helpful.
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