Formatting a screenplay with musical sequences

A producer I was talking to online was curious about how to format his screenplay in which 90% of his dialogue was song lyrics. Should it be like the script for Les Miserables or Pink Floyd’s The Wall? I thought the discussion was worth blogging about here.

Opera or Music Video?

In opera, all dialogue is sung as melody. So if is a work has no “regular speaking,” we call it operatic.  Les Miserables the film is based on a stage musical, and in both cases the dialogue is sung in ths way.

Alternatively, there are films that incorporate music and lyrics more like non-diagetic soundtrack. Pink Floyd’s The Wall has some scenes where the main character Pink performs. Mostly, the segments act more like a string of music videos, with faceless voice over.

Let’s look at the scripts to see how they were written.

Les Miserables

The script for Les Miserables is here:

https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/les-miserables-2012.pdf

It’s pretty straightforward. There are references in the action lines to “they sing” occasionally. And songs are called out, such as on page 4:

“As we hear the musical theme (’Freedom is Mine’), we see for the first time the darkness in his face give way to a new hope…”

So the script is referring to song titles to let you know when the main setpieces begin. This would work in conjunction with a soundtrack album, or assuming the reader had some knowledge of the source material.

Pink Floyd’s The Wall

For Pink Floyd’s The Wall, I found this document.

https://ia600500.us.archive.org/28/items/PinkFloydsTheWallMovieScript/Pi…

Looks like it’s a paste-up of storyboards mixed with the script. The script pages contain the song lyrics in their entirety, followed by the traditional sceenplay format for the scenes that accompany the songs. This works because most of the lyrics are sung OVER visuals, not spoken by characters on screen.

Once in a while, you do get the character Pink singing, like this on page 11:

INT. HALL STAGE NIGHT

“So ya’ Thought ya’
Might like to go to
The show…”

On stage, at the start of the verse of “In the Flesh” we cut to a neo-nazi, punk/skinhead SINGER.

This works, as we already got the complete lyrics on the previous page.

Later, at the end of page 13, in the action lines:

“In the Flesh” concludes.

And we move on to the next song.

On subsequent songs, the lyrics are written in dialogue blocks, with no character assigned. There are occasional references to the NARRATORS, the actual Pink Floyd band playing in concert footage. (Ultimately, this idea was dropped and this footage did not appear in the final film.)

Usually, having unassigned dialogue blocks could be confusing, but in this special case it’s done consistently and purposefully. Another way to do it would be to assign a character name to the lyrics, something like NARRATOR or LYRICS, do differentiate those words from any dialogue spoken on-screen by characters.

What’s your movie like?

Generally, when I have a formatting question like this, I think of some comps for what I’m writing, and then search to see if their screenplays are online. No sense re-inventing the wheel if someone else already has figured out a valid method!

Some other musical screenplays to look up that might be helpful: Across the Universe, Sweeney Todd, and Into The Woods.