I found the logline a little confusing, but gave this a shot anyway, and yep, I found the whole thing confusing - I’m not entirely sure what the hell was going on.

The writing seemed to veer from smart to poor - there was a lot of flowery prose that didn’t make sense.

The one saving grace was the dialogue. It wasn’t great throughout, but when it was good it was really sharp, so kudos for that.

It felt like it could have been a scene from a feature rather than a stand alone short.

Not sure where the title fits in to the story and wouldn't have known there was a civil war except that it was mentioned in the logline. Confused as hell on the finish. Was he making a fur coat?

Typos and repetition aside, I kinda liked it but it needs more context or clues to what the hell's going on. Good work.

Hmmm

I like the tone of this, there's a noir feel to some of it and I think it could look good filmed... but...

At the mo I think it is a little unclear on the whats and whys, needs a clearer drive and explanation.

But I think some tweaking and a polish and it could be really good.

Decent effort.

“Everything is covered in darkness”. Are you trying to tell me that the décor is very dark?
Seem to me that we’re seeing the sun from only one perspective so, rising or setting? It has to be one or another.
How do you stalk a cellar door?
Not sure “shucks” is used correctly here. Maybe the word “Chucks”?
I’m confused as to who is blasted to the wall by Bishops gun.
Where did Judas go? Is Judas Garret now?
“Garret is shaking. Barrel of a shotgun. Ford. Bishop. Shotgun. Ford rips down Garret’s drawers.” What?If the oxygen has completely left the room then why isn't everyone dead?
What does shaving have to do with anything?
What was the apocalypse?
There is a lot to be cleared up here and there are plenty of pages to do it.

Hey,
Nice characters and atmosphere.
I understood DR Garrett and other rich people rip the poor off the organs and live for very long. I guess its postapocalyptuc times.
See thats why postapocalypse works worse than apocalypse. For postapocalypse you have to show how its all related to apocalypse. Otherwise it gives you the feeling that the story is undone. I eventhought I didnt understand the story correctly but upon readingit for the second time I thought there's nothing to understand - its not a complicated story.
The thing that I didnt understand is - why now. Why Ford is able to fight Garrett and the like now. And he's pretty efficient at that - so why not earlier. Garrett has been living for the very long tume after all... the

This is written like a shooting script. I'll save this one for last.

The sun is rising or setting depending on where you're seeing out from... aha The doctor's study I thought, which in turn is surrounded in darkness. Wow!

I finished and I'm sorry but I have no idea what happened and where the apocalypse actually is.

A lot of over written action and dialogue.

Not for me.

Good job entering though

Ahh, the final one. Let's go.

Title is too religious for my liking. Not sure what the logline even means.

As I already said, it's written as a shooting script, rather than a spec. Shooting script aren't written until the film goes into production. Turn this crap off in your software. However, I'll try to ignore it; there's much worse mistakes you could make in a script. And... it's only seven pages -- What do I have to lose?

You have two or three paragraphs compressed into one. Break them up.

Paragraph 1. Everything is covered in darkness blah blah blah.
Paragraph 2. Ebony wood blah blah blah
Paragraph 3. FORD blah blah blah

You have too many things happening in one paragraph -- and this is the first page! Not good at all. Think of each paragraph as a thought or a shot.

Also, you should never go beyond five lines in a paragraph in a script.

Quoted Text The sun is rising -- or setting on the horizon. It depends on where you’re seeing it from.

Terrible line, just terrible. Borderline unfilmable. Some may argue it's passive, but how else can you write that the sun is rising? It doesn't rise in an instant, but gradually. I'd scrap the whole line, as it adds nothing.

Is he an actual Bishop or is that just his name, like Lance Henricksen in Aliens?

Scene numbers and (CONTINUED) have absolutely no place in a spec script, as they clutter up the page and rob you of the coveted "white space." A (spec) script should look lean and clean, to whatever degree.

What do you mean by ironic? Do you mean the true definition "the opposite of what is expected"? The Alanis Morrisette definition? Sarcastic? Mocking?

Quoted Text FORD Bad, can be fixed. Fucked, can not. BISHOP Should I write that down, sir?

Ha ha, I like this.

Quoted Text Four armed men, rag tag and armed

You say "armed" twice, which is redundantly redundant.

"GARRET, a BALD" I'll be honest I thought that said BRAD GARRETT.

I already don't trust the fellow named JUDAS. Unless his last name is PRIEST and looks like Rob Halford.

Quoted Text Who even are you, anyways?

"even" (and where it's placed in the sentence) makes it sound like the popular internet meme, "What even does that mean?

"Doctor Garret," not "Dr. Garret."

Quoted Text in the Garden of Eden

In-A-Gadda-Da Vida, baby!

Quoted Text The room tastes of blood and sweat.

We can't taste the film.   This is completely unfilmable, unless you're planning on ushering in Taste-O-Vision.   Stranger things have happened.

Garret can't "breath." Nobody else can, either. "Breath" is the noun, "breathe" is the verb. Plus, how can we see or hear this? You should instead write that they gasp for air.

Again, you have three paragraphs crammed into one. Way too much going on in one paragraph.

1. Garret notices...
2. One set in particular...
3. Until he realizes...

I don't think that last line was needed. Just end it on the reveal.

Overall, not too bad. Just fix the above and you'll be fine.

The Gospel - Apocalypse, Dramedy, Thriller - Financial inequality forces civil war across the world, but a man and his followers believe atonement can be made when not found. 

Rating: 1
Thoughts: This one left me scratching my head.  Not sure what the second half of the logline means. 

TITLE: The Gospel

STORY

Concept is fresh/and or original - 2

Theme is well executed/interweaved - 2

Stakes are clear/conflict is strong and or compelling - 2

Story - 1

Ending - 1

CHARACTER/DIALOGUE

Protagonist(s) is (are) likable and/or compelling - 2

Dialogue reads naturally/believable within this story - 1

Dialogue reveals character -  1

READABILITY

Action text "shows" instead of "tells" - 2

Overall readability - 2

Total: 1.6

This is my best effort to explain this story. Thank you for reading, commenting, and just taking the time to help me out.

To start, it’s my second attempt at screenwriting, and I’m pretty happy about how it turned out. I also misread the instructions to the challenge. I thought I read that there was a five page limit. Friday night, I realized it said twelve page limit. I tried to add a little more last minute, but it was too late.

The reason why that’s important is it forced me to try and cram this big idea into a really small amount of space.

The basic story is this, Ford is a psychopath who breaks into these rich people’s houses and cuts off their face and scalp. He uses their faces for the lining of his coat, and their hairy heads for the furry outside.

Things you may have missed- The title, logline, and storyline all align on a sort of satrical version of the historical Jesus story (mostly from the book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan).

A quick overview of that story. Jesus is sick and tired of all the rich Jews, because they are the only ones who can afford to talk to God because of the ridiculous sacrifices needed to repent for sin.

So, to get God to be available to all the poor Jews living in the country and whatnot, he spreads a new gospel.  Basically, the biggest relation here is that Jesus fought for poor jews living in the countryside against the Jewish “aristocrats” of the time. Also, the system of sacrificing to repent to God is being mirrored by Ford.

It’s also notable that Ford is preaching for flesh sacrifice instead of free access to God, the opposite of Jesus, because he understands that the system will never actually be changed. The rich always have it over the poor, so, Ford figures he may as well have the rich people pay with something with a real cost. Their own skin.

The Gospel - first hint this is going to have religious undertones.

Logline “a man and his followers believe atonement can be made when not found.” Atonement is used here specifically because the definition in religious context is, “reparation or expiation for sin.”

So, the man in the logline is Ford, this is his gospel, and his gospel isn’t the love your brother kind of gospel from the New Testament. Atonement can be made, or forced onto those who Ford deems in need of it, when it isn’t found. This feeds into the historical Jesus idea that he wasn’t this peace-loving hippy, but actually an anti-establishment zealot who had more in common with Che than Mother Teresa. Force will be needed.

Why assume Ford is a Jesus copycat? This is his gospel, and he doesn’t have random followers, but TWELVE followers (ahem! Apostles!). One of them is named Judas. My mistake, the number of people following Ford was a very important detail that I should of made much more noticeable.

Other important hints -

Ford’s dialogue is kind of preachy. He talks about the Garden of Eden, Herod’s temple (all that talk about gentiles and sacrifice at the altar), Bishop is always writing down things he says for Ford’s sunday services, and he talks about spreading the “good news” (that should of been capitalized to Good News for proper usage.)

There is also another layer to this story, do we trust the narrator. Ford is our narrator, and is obviously batshit crazy. Is he actually this righteous holy man he claims to be? I mean, he’s skinning people alive, but he’s trying to justify that it’s alright because he’s skinning some really awful people. Is he really doing something good for society? Or, is he making up a story to support his crazy obsession with scalping people?

In the very beginning, he is surrounded by darkness (very symbolic darkness, the actual darkness is the ebony wood that covers everything--ebony is a black wood). This darkness at first could just be seen as evil is all around him, but at that other layer, darkness completely surrounding the narrator could be seen as Ford’s intense mental/emotional isolation. He is so deep down in his own mind that he can’t see anything through all the darkness inside there. Meaning, it’ll be hard to see the truth through all that darkness.

Sun is setting/ rising line is getting taken out, purely symbolic. Trying to warn the reader that this story can’t be looked at from one perspective, and to make people see that the actions taken by Ford can be seen in a different light. Is he good/bad? It depends on where you’re looking from.

Those were my big talking points, time to answer your individual comments!

Cam Gray - Thanks for starting me off with some positivity, really got excited when I read your comments. As far as the shooting script goes, yeah I didn’t know to turn that stuff off in formatting.

Mark Renshaw - Armed men was a last minute mistake I made, pretty upset with it. It was a rush job trying to figure out where to put all of Ford’s followers and how to describe them.

Yeah, these rich people keep transplanting their brains into new bodies, or repairing their old bodies with expensive medical procedures. The hair is scalped off the rich people Ford terrorizes. It’s not important story-wise. BUT…

In old Judea, at Herod’s Temple to repent to God you usually had to make a sacrifice of some kind. So, Ford forces these men to atone for their sins by making them sacrifice their own flesh instead of some chickens.

Nomad - You’re right, too wordy. Irony in the cookie cutter thing comment is that Bishop is a cookie cutter model of the perfect soldier, meaning he should be able to follow orders perfectly, but he can’t follow what Ford is saying. It’s a dumb joke.

He circled around Ford because Ford is so volatile/crazy that Bishop is scared he would kill him just for bumping into him. Also, foreshadowing to the incident with Judas. It shows that the slightest thing will set Ford off. Hence, we’re not even sure why he is so pissed off with Judas before he kills him because there’s not really a great reason. Ford is just nuts.

Hair and gray flesh is scalp and old face meat.

Cipher, Eckhart, could be important or nonsensical b.s. to make Ford’s story seem like it is more legit than it is.

RickFyvie- You’re kind of close to being right.

Pale yellow - Pretty much explained it all up there.

Dan C - I wanted to do an apocalypse that didn’t focus really on the apocalypse itself, but what happened to society after. I just thought we all assumed there was an apocalypse and that’s why I didn’t feel the need to go into such detail to explain little more than what was going on in the story. Felt like rich people hiding out in giant basement vaults and getting skinned alive by raiding maniacs seemed kind of apocalyptic enough on its own.

PrussianMosby - You make a lot of good points, very useful comments. Sam is actually meant to be Uncle Sam in that bit of dialogue.

ReefDreamer- You’re right, need a clearer ending. Good point. Logline is explained above.

Conz - Yeah, uhm, pretty much.

Hawkeye - Yeah, pretty much part deux.

Dreamscale - Yeah, pretty much. Also, maybe look into starting a regiment of baby aspirin.

DarrenJames- Talked about the symbolic darkness and rising setting sun above. Yeah, good point with the whole banging and shouting from downstairs thing. Thanks.

Stevenclark - I hope you don’t steal my work, but thanks for the compliment.

Heretic - Yes, yes, yes. Most useful tip of the thread. Right on.

SteveUK- Yeah, I wanted to leave it open for possible transition to full feature.

JEStaats - Yeah I kind of fell short of explaining the civil war. Good point.

Anthony - Thanks for the read.

Wes - No, I meant shuck. It was improper usage. Judas is blasted by Bishop’s gun. Judas is dead. Oxygen didn’t literally leave the room, Garret was just unable to breathe. Yeah, I needed to clear things up.

Khamamananamana- Good points, and that just adds to the can you trust the narrator argument. Why is he so good at finding these people now? Sounds like his story doesn’t completely add up.

Irish eyes - refer to answer above about darkness and sunriseset

Chrisbodily - Yeah, you’re right.

Angry Bear- Ouch.

So, there it is. Everything, pretty much. I guess. Don’t worry, the rewrite will look nicer.

HeyDaddy,

You do know that Angry Bear (Pia) was just posting the scorecard, right?

I'm not too fond of scorecards myself.

By your own admission this is your second attempt so don't in any way be hard on yourself.

Good to hear a rewrite is on its way.

Yes, I was ouching over my score of 1.6 😂

Trying not to be too critical, but I always get so emotionally involved in my work. All I can do is use all the really good tips given to me from the readers and use it to make a better product.

Hey Daddy -

After reading your exposition above, I gave it another read. I'm not AS confused but I think I still strayed from the path you meant for me to take. But I think I see where you intended this to go and I dig it. You've some great lines in there and with some thought, this could be a winner.

I look forward to reading the rev when it's reading for viewing - good luck!
John