Help? Authentic Movie Dialogue!

[mverta]

I am doing post-production on an alien attack movie. It's an independent feature, but just because they don't have a lot of money doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get things right if we can. But hardly anybody bothers. This is where I'm hoping some of you can help, or point me in the right direction.

Basically, a couple of F-22s have to go investigate a mothership, and eventually both are taken out by the ship's lasers. For various "movie" reasons, they're going to get first eyes on the thing and report because other communications are down. There's more to it than that, but I would love to know, if this were really going down, how this would actually sound; who would be saying what; who would be reporting; what the nature of it would be.

Listening to a lot of dogfight com, it always sounds to me like pilots do their best to state matter-of-factly what's going on, punctuated by occasional moments of adrenaline which betray them. But still, just the mechanics of it - the lexicon of it.... I'm not a pilot.

If we were Paramount, I guess we'd have a consultant. Failing that, I'm hoping you guys can help

Anything you guys got would be so welcome and appreciated!

Thanks,

_Mike

 

[StephenBierce]

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/aim_basic_4-03-14.pdf
The above link is to the FAA's online copy of the official Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM). The part you want to look at is Chapter 5, Section 6 which is all about how the government and military handles unidentified aircraft. Both the home base for the interceptors and the overall command post (probably NORAD)--as well as any command aircraft (AWACS?)--would be monitoring the standard frequencies as this is happening.
Of course, each interceptor would have two callsigns: the mission callsign for the plane and the personal callsign of the pilot. The crews would always use their mission callsign when talking to control, and reserve the personal callsigns for when talking to one another.

 

[CB90]

I would refer you to airwarriors.com (USN).

It is frequented by military pilots, and if you're nice about it, they may be inclined to help you out.