General chatter in several frames.

[Bubzy]

I have a part of my comic (started out as a written story) where nothing really happens, its just a bunch of guys rushing around and the general banter as they are passing.

Cut to a busy command center, lots of people panicking and rushing around, the colours are drab, purples and browns, there are lab technicians there, their coats are white, but faded to match the general dimness of the scene.
The Technology is powerful but looks antiquated, valves and knobs dominate the consoles with typewriter style buttons on the keyboards, a few buttons are around, they are red and encased in push protective units marked ”launch” it is all charcoal in colour. There are many monitors in the command center, the general look of the center is similar to a “mission control” style

Chatter : “oops sorry”, “get out of my way”, “what the hell?”, “roger that, ill call you back in 3 minutes”, “who did this?”

although this isnt completely imperative to the story i would like to get a shot of the control centre in , as the next scene is a guy blowing smitherines out of the place with a handgun, so im trynig to decide if i can make a few people talk in one frame, or to have shots in several frames, or just to leave it out completely.

[Vulpeslibertas]

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but I'll give it a go.

It depends a bit on the mood and pacing of your comic. A montage might work as well as frames, but I'd recommend a full-page wide-pan view. The only problem there is that the guy bursting in on the next page is lible to be full-page and you don't want to undercut the dramatic impact of that scene.

You might go with a top of the page as a wide pan shot with chatter and then three or so small frames at the bottom focusing in on dirty coffee cups, fingers twiddling with glasses, and a hand resting near one of those launch buttons. Stuff like that, all with a background comment or two.

[Joel Fagin]

I usually see this done with a crowd of unattributed overlapping speech bubbles. That is, no little arrow to show who the bubble belongs to. Sometimes the speech bubbles are grey to indicate they're background noise and they usually get smaller as they recede into the frame.

- Joel Fagin

[Bustertheclown]

That description looks like an establishing shot to me. One frame. Big, even a splash page if you wanted to. No need to give undue attention to characters that really don't matter at all, who are merely there to speak "chatter" dialog where what's being said is of no real consequence. It's not conversation, it's crowd noise. I like Joel's solution to this a lot.

[Lassek]

I like how here and there crowd noise or even any unimportant speech is done totally without any kind of bubbles, a bit like sound effects. It draws just the right amount of attention (tiny) and doesn't take up much space.

I think it works best with hand-written text.

Upon reflection, it would make for a different effect than with bubbles, in many situations...