A map at the start for reference?

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  • A map at the start for reference?

    Medieval Europe, and probably most other places, had vastly different political borders, as well as well-known cities that aren't in the same countries today.

    The action of a script of mine takes place across Western Europe at this time, and since borders and locations play a big role in the story, I was wondering if I should include a simple map of Europe at this time, with the paths of the main characters.

    Just so the reader doesn't ask, "Wait, this region/city is in France, why are there Germans and Italians living there?" or "Where is this town in relation to this other place?"

    Or is this unnecessary and a turn-off to readers who just want to go right to page one? The script is understandable without it, but it still might make it easier, particularly for American readers. Plus it'd spare a few lines in several scenes that explain where the location is.

  • #2
    Re: A map at the start for reference?

    If you think the movie might not make sense to a reader without a map, it probably won't make sense to a viewer without a map either.

    I'd want to find a way to put the information on screen. Sometimes this is literally a map that pops up every time Indiana Jones flies around the globe; sometimes it's as simple as in the second season of Rome when Pompey crudely sketches the Battle of Pharsalus with a stick in the sand as he explains it to another character.

    Do the story really depend on knowing e.g. precisely where the borders of Lotharingia were and why they were precarious? Or could two characters be out hunting in the snow, see a wounded stag fighting off a wolf on each side, when one of the knights says something like, "trapped between Neustria and Austrasia, eventually we too must fall to the wolves..."

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    • #3
      Re: A map at the start for reference?

      We didn't need a map of the Degobah system, nor a description of where it was in relation to Tatooine. I've seen movies about King Arthur that just place "Camelot" without relation to any other geographic reference to England. IIRC, nearly all of the "Sharpe" series had little to no explanation of where Sharpe's troop was, other than brief references to cities and countries.

      My guess is that geography is far less critical than you think.

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      • #4
        Re: A map at the start for reference?

        I wouldn't bother if I were you. It feels like everybody's making a humungous sacrifice just reading the first 5 pages, let alone breaking a sweat trying to gather what is where.

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        • #5
          Re: A map at the start for reference?

          Do you mean an actual map included in the script or showing the map in the film?

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          • #6
            Re: A map at the start for reference?

            I actually always thought this was a cool idea. With Sci Fi or historical stories, many times half the work is getting the audience there. If you can do something simple like including a map, it can really help add texture. Just don't make it REQUIRED reading.

            P.S. Travis Beacham's draft of PACIFIC RIM begins with a 2 page preface which is a Lexicon of pertinent terms. So the first 2 pages of his script were literally reading the dictionary. But he did this to avoid intentionally expositional dialogue in which characters have to explain away past events or terminology.

            Some say it worked well for the script, others say it didn't.
            Write, rite, wright... until you get it RIGHT.

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            • #7
              Re: A map at the start for reference?

              Sure. No reason you can't. This type of thing or other unorthodox things have been done in the beginning of scripts that went on to do great things plenty of times before.

              To my mind though, I think you'd be better off just including a sentence or two explaining and reminding the reader that the script takes place in this certain time and the borders were different back then.

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              • #8
                Re: A map at the start for reference?

                I've never really kept track of geography while watching a movie, especially period films. If they're in one place where everyone is German, and in the next town everyone is Italian, I'll just assume they crossed a border rather than trying to imagine the specific border in my mind.

                I'm also not particularly bothered by maps, though. If location is very important to the film, I could see including a map. They're fairly common in medieval and fantasy movies.

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                • #9
                  Re: A map at the start for reference?

                  Originally posted by entlassen View Post
                  Medieval Europe, and probably most other places, had vastly different political borders, as well as well-known cities that aren't in the same countries today.

                  The action of a script of mine takes place across Western Europe at this time, and since borders and locations play a big role in the story, I was wondering if I should include a simple map of Europe at this time, with the paths of the main characters.

                  Just so the reader doesn't ask, "Wait, this region/city is in France, why are there Germans and Italians living there?" or "Where is this town in relation to this other place?"

                  Or is this unnecessary and a turn-off to readers who just want to go right to page one? The script is understandable without it, but it still might make it easier, particularly for American readers. Plus it'd spare a few lines in several scenes that explain where the location is.
                  At the back of Anthony Burgess' Clockwork Orange there's a little language dictionary where he explains what all of those odd words that his characters use mean in regular English.

                  But in the movie, there ain't no place for a dictionary -- unless you wanted them to put in some sort of weird sub-titling.

                  You have to pick up what droogies and staja and all the slang that the characters use on the fly.

                  If something is really important to the reader to understand then it's going to be really important for the audience, who won't get to see maps or read footnotes or addenda or anything else, to understand.

                  That means that if it's "really" important, you need to find a way to incorporate that information into a script -- you usually do that by having an POV character of some kind -- a stranger or a novice or somebody new to the situation who needs to have otherwise common knowledge explained to him -- and by extension, to us.

                  But very often, you'll find that things that you think need explaining often don't.

                  NMS

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