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Frozen Blue by Jim Waterous - Series - Shot to death in 1965, a 27 year old NYPD cop is cryogenically frozen and brought back to life 50 years later, trying to rejoin the hi-tech Force of 2015. If that’s not challenging enough, imagine the unprecedented family dynamic of still being 27 with a son who's 51 (also a cop), a 'widow', 76, and a granddaughter, 19, with the hots for you! 51 pages - pdf, format
Interesting title. Logline needs a lot of work. 1-2 sentences. Flipping around, you have large blocks of action and large blocks of dialog that need to be cut.
Your very first paragraph - it's Puerto Rican.
Way too many 'we see'
Pg 42 you just end mid dialog. Do you have the correct version uploaded?
Thank you for your comments Tony! As a newcomer to this form of writing, I appreciate any and all feedback. I will be doing an update to the script later today, to include the correct spelling of Puerto Rican. I guess that's what I get for using the Canadian English program in my computer! As for the comment regarding mid dialogue, I accidently submitted the first 5 pages of the second episode. I thought I had deleted pages 38 to 42.
I truly believe that there are several ingredients conducive to a compelling, entertaining TV series.
The above puts me off reading your script. Obviously you truly believe this to be the case or you wouldn't have written it, surely?
It screams amateur.
Let's see what happens when I open it up.
And my assumption is confirmed. I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but there's a very good chance that anyone in a professional capacity receiving this script will bin it before opening it... should they open it they would realise that they shouldn't have bothered.
Code
FADE IN
FADE IN:
If you'd have left FADE IN: out I wouldn't have batted an eyelid, but as you have used it then you should learn how to do so properly.
Code
EXT DAY
Again, wrongly formatted. You need EXT. PLACE WHERE WE ARE - DAY for it to be correct.
They may seem like little inconsequential things to you, but they show me that you haven't really spent much time understanding the rules of this game.
Then we get to your writing. I haven't read it yet, but I am presented with 10 lines of action. Nobody should ever need 10 lines of action.
Code
We see a young NYPD officer in foot pursuit of a
teenaged boy through alleys and lane ways in a mixed
commercial and residential area of the Bronx. The
officer is clearly gaining on the boy, who appears to
be Porto Rican. The cop tackles the youth from behind
and while the perp is still face down against the
pavement, cuffs him. The officer then grabs the boy -
who is about 6 feet tall and very thin – and stands him
upright, pushing his face into an old, rotted wooden
fence that’s as high as the youngster is tall.
And there it is. Where to begin?
All characters should be capped on first introduction.
Let's take the first sentence:
Code
We see a young NYPD officer in foot pursuit of a
teenaged boy through alleys and lane ways in a mixed
commercial and residential area of the Bronx.
A young NYPD OFFICER chases a tall teenage BOY through alleys and lane ways.
You should alert us to the fact this is set in the BRONX, by placing it in the slug, like so: EXT. BRONX - DAY
Try not to go over 4 lines of action per block. Write by camera shot. If the camera moves to a new shot, or something different happens, try starting a new action line.
To add to the rest of the comments, it doesn't seem like this was written in any screenwriting software. Screenplays are written in 12 point Courier, the font size is a lot bigger here. The title page should be on a separate page from the script and page numbers should be in the right corner. Apart from that, there are slug lines unnecessarily broken up into multiple lines, superfluous fade in's and outs between scenes, and wordy descriptions. In a traditional screenplay sense, instead of 42 pages, you probably have something between 20-30 here.
It doesn't look like you're using any screenwriting software. You should look into getting one -- Trelby, WriterDuet and Celtx are all free or have free versions.
I thought the first scene looked good, with a nice transition to the funeral, the presentation with the format and writing just shoots everything down. I recommend reading scripts, it's the best way to get a grasp on the format.
Welcome to the boards as well. Stick around, contribute by reading other people's scripts and joining in on discussions.
Thank you, everyone for the extremely helpful comments. I have taken all of your suggestions into consideration and revised the entire script, which I just re-submitted moments ago. Assuming it may take a few days to re-appear, I would again appreciate any feedback based on the changes. After shortening the lines of action and reducing the font size, DS was absolutely correct, in that it went from 42 to 28 pages.
And Dustin, I sincerely apologize for mixing up the D with a J. I loved the well deserved 'Dim' comeback!
They may seem like little inconsequential things to you, but they show me that you haven't really spent much time understanding the rules of this game.
Well said. Even if some people think the rules don't apply to them or want to change them, they indeed are there. Just embrace em. After all, they aren't very hard to follow.
I've only read a few pages but already I can tell that dialogue is something you should work on. I didn't respond favourably to the first lines of dialogue on Pg 1:
"COP: Do you have any ID you useless bastard?"
"BOY: Leave me alone cop?"
"BOY: Leave me alone pig"
It didn't feel natural to me at all. I'm not a big believer in writing dialogue designed to emulate the way people actually talk day-to-day in real life. Rather I think that screenwriting dialogue should sound like real people at their most clear, colourful and concise. This dialogue didn't really work for me, unfortunately. Would the boy really address the cop as "cop"? I'm not sure. If you are trying to alert the audience to the fact that the guy's a cop, don't worry about it because presumably we can see that from his uniform. Maybe I'd find it more palatable if it was clearer that English was not the boy's first language, so he has fewer insulting terms at his disposal so he resorts to "cop" and "pig". That might work.
Likewise with "You didn't hear my son, copper? He said he didn't do nothin'" which feels a little bit like you are trying to smuggle in the fact that the boy is his son. You might have to make this fact clear in some other, more subtle way if you don't want the dialogue to feel forced.
Pg 2 "Out of apparent nowhere" is not proper idiomatic English. "Out of nowhere" would be better. Watch out for this type of stuff.
Pg 3 Gabriel's first monologue needs breaking up. It is too long and wordy. You try to pack way too much information into the sentences which run on for clause after clause.
The same can be said of Lettinger's speech that immediately follows: too dense, too much info (names, dates etc.)
I won't read on right now because I can see that there are more long monologues ahead.
I'd advise you to break some of these up and try to think of more concise ways of conveying all this information either through action or dialogue. If you go ahead and try to remedy some of the above, I'd be happy to give it a second go.
Thank you, Georgia. I really appreciate the valuable critique. I am in the process of a third re-write, this time with a software program. I hope to submit it in the next couple of days. Admittedly, it has been a challenge for me to overcome as far as downsizing the dialogue. I've already cut it down somewhat and would appreciate your effort, if possible, to offer further feedback.
Just wondering, is this suppose to be a half hour show or an hour. The dialogue gives a lot of information that I'm wondering if it's all necessary. I see in the logline that's it's suppose to be a comedy, but I'm not picking up this theme as I read.
After your opening scene I don't see anything about him being frozen and why he was frozen. I'm a little confused at this point. Now 50 years later they want to bring him back. If you look at Robocop, there was a reason as to turn him into a robot, part greed on the corporation and part to save his life.
Looking ahead in the script, I see more explanation of what's going on which leads me to believe all the dialogue at the beginning is filler.
I think in my opinion, you need to make the story simple. It can work but just don't fill it up with all kinds of unnecessary dialogue.
Hi Jim - one suggestion I have is to break this into five-minute/page sections.
That would give you time to get at least one 'event that matters' in to each one, as at its current length you're simply repeating the same mistakes over and over.
If you could get a five-pager up, you'd get feedback on how to get that right, and then then move on to a longer piece.
Thank you, Erica. You bring up some very compelling points. To answer your first question, it is designed as a 1 hour pilot episode. I guess I should have been more clear in the logline, as it is meant to be a drama, with some humorous twists around the 50 year culture and tech conflicts. Looking at it honestly and in spite of my attempt at humour, I don't think it could even pass as a dramedy.
As the pilot episode, I was trying to set the table for what I'm hoping to be picked up as a series. You're not alone in your observations of the lengthy dialogue. Perhaps in my attempt to leave no question unanswered, I over compensated.
As for the reason behind bringing him back, I had hoped to make that clear by the personal connection between the Cryonics CEO, his father, the father of the subject and the subject's story within itself.
As I mentioned to Georgia, I am doing a third re-write which I hope to submit over the next couple of days. I will definitely take your observations into consideration as well.