House by - needed refuge from the weather, she find a place, make a unexpected acquainted character, ho hide a dark mystery.
Brief - A young woman discovers old books and old men have old ways of staying young.
Locations & Sets - Exterior, mountain road. Exterior, motel lobby/office @ night. Interior, motel lobby/office @ night.
Actors - MARIA (
, HARRY (
Costumes - Old man clothes
Props - antique books, knife, liquid stage blood
Audio FX - latch fumbling, creaking door
Visual FX - Rain effect
Other - bicycle
Genre & Marketability - horror drama
Comments - OMG. A girl riding a bicycle - on a mountain road - in the rain. When given criteria such as “microbudget” and “in a beat-up motel” a writer should stick to the producer’s criteria. Just start with her on the bicycle pedaling into the motel’s parking lot. In fact, just begin from the motel lobby interior and have her drive up to the door on her bicycle to save some effort/cost. English a second language? (That’s okay. I can only speak and write in one language, so you’re doing considerably better that me.)
Alright, you gotta severely pare down your descriptions. Dialog’s a bit stiff. Turn off your screenwriting program’s mores and continueds feature. Characters are introduced in all caps followed by age and brief description.
Example, from page 2:
The step go down the stairs, frozen, she don't move,
staring at the door of the room. Sound of fumbling at the
latch and the door swing open. In the door stand a old man,
white bearded and white hair, wearing really old fashion
clothing.
Cut it down to...
Maria goes downstairs. She stops at the door of another room where someone fumbles with the latch before it opens.
HARRY, 70, white hair and old clothes, smiles at her.
Now, imagine I put a video camera in your hand and gave you two actors and a stairway.
Re-read both versions a couple times and consider if you would film them different in any significant way that the viewing audience would appreciate. Probably not.
You have “INT. MOTEL LEAVING ROOM - NIGHT” four times in a row. Don’t do that. Characters are not interesting, just a nice girl that gets scared and a friendly old creep. Storm coming, but no hurricane. No decision being made. Certainly none between good and evil. Story’s a little predictable. Good use of minimal cast, a few props, and essentially one location with two brief establishing shots, one of which can be eliminated entirely. And I wanna give a little shout out to whomever wrote “One of God's Special Children” that people of different cultures do indeed have different ways of speaking and there’s nothing derogatory in intent.
Script format: needs work. Final word: Uninteresting characters & story
$500 - $1,000 Lo/Hi Estimated Budget Range
/ 5.25 Screenplay Pages
= $95 - $190 Estimated Cost Per Screen Minute
Adherence to Given Criteria:
Odd but interesting character(s) - nope
take refuge from a hurricane - nope
in a beat-up motel - yep
and are forced to make a choice - nope
between good or evil - nope
in order to survive the night. - nope
Each character must -
have some history involving a supernatural event in their lives - yep
that factors into their choice. - nope, Harry’s going to kill her, no choice
Genre is open. - horror drama
This is a micro-budget short, - yep
so no destruction of the motel, - yep
no children or animals - yep
and minimal special effects. - yep
BONUS! Story also included:
mime(s) - nope
dinosaur(s) - nope
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WBdeA3ZfngPz7NfJg_5DSBUFsZXkicfyNQHRc8Bg2SQ/edit