Closed Shut by Gary Benjamin Holt Jr.  (Yeaster) - Horror - A group of honor college students are sent into an IMAX Museum for an academic trip. However, things go horribly wrong when the doors shut, and the museum begins to unravel, revealing its true nature. With death lurking at every corner, these young adults must face physical obstacles - as well as mental - if they want to escape this dungeon alive. 119 pages - pdf, format

Well, this one sounded interesting so I thought I'd take a look at it. Here are some comments:

-First of all, your script's title page shouldn't be numbered, man.
And Fade In is usually written in all-CAPS and on the left side of the page. At least that's how I think it is.

-"EXT. AUDITION ROOM - DAY" So they're oustide the Audition room? What the hell?  

-I don't think you should include "dusk" in a slugline unless it's absolutely necessary. Just say Day or Night.

-You didn't describe Cassandra. This way, I could picture a wrinkled 50-year-old woman even though you were picturing someone young and beautiful.

-I noticed most of your character descriptions are very flat. Joey is only described as being 19. Okay, what else? You need to flesh them out physically

-There are several instaces where you use apostophes incorrectly. Such as Colby saying "sound's easy".

-The whole explanation for how the things came to be I feel was a bit cliched.

-Sometimes, the dialogue from most of the friends reminded me a lot of the Friday 13th films.

-Why were the monsters reduced to ashes with crosses? If they were made out of negative energy, which is a human and completely normal trait, I see no evil why they should dissolve by touching a crucifix. Serial killers are evil, but do they explode when they touch a cross? Vampires I get because they're supposed the devil's spawn and not just some "negative energy".

-You got some nice Horror moments like Lucia's womb stretching to have Edward come out of it. Good stuff.

This read could've been better, but I enjoyed it. It had its degree of cheesyness but it was ok. Nothing I couldn't enjoy.

Good luck on your next project.

--Julio

Thank you, thank you. I'll go back to correct and those mistakes.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, I enjoyed writing it. Yeah, sorry about the titled page being numbered. You can blame Microsoft word for that. :p

Alright, for my own benefit (as a things-to-avoid kind of thing), what were some of the cheesy moments/moments or poor dialouge? I want to fix what I can.  I tried to write in a "old school horror" kind of way, without being totally and completely horrible and cliche. The new horror movies haven't really been interesting to me, so I prefer the ones from the late 70s.

About the descriptions, before I wrote too much, so I tried to keep things a little vague, here. Next time, I'll find a "balance" between the two.

I never said the dialogue was poor--I did remind me of Friday the 13th, but don't worry, it's not THAT bad. I shouldn't have used such a specific example. It reminded me of that fake movie teen-talk from the 80s, but it wasn't so obvious. I did get the old-school vibe form it which is cool. Even though I'm young I *LOVE* 80s slasher stuff.

I could find the Friay talk pretty much whenever someone besides Lucia and Joey opened their mouths.

What I found cheesy was how the monsters were able to be killed, such as the woman dissolving to ash with the crucifix. Don't get me wrong, monsters are not always unkillable, but when they die it should be either really gruesome, really scary, or really disturbing. The way you killed them was like something out of a comic-book and not a Horror film--Movies get cheesy when the monsters can be easily killed by a character, like with, say, a crucifix. And they get a lot cheesier when there is no explanation as to why the crucifix harms them. A guy did black magic there, we get it, but the monsters themselves were born out of negative energy so why would they die by crucifixes? Maybe I missed something here, but still, the crucifix thing only adds to a chesyness factor that's already there.

You can take cheesy elements and still make it original, but the way you did it was like something out of a Buffy episode.

The whole "let's go for some guns and ammo to kill some monsters!" thing was cheesy as well. This is all, of course, my opinion.

--Julio

Alright, so sorry to bother you again, but I made some changes. I took out the creep "cross-death" and replaced it with something else. What do you think?

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(BATHROOM SCENE: LUCIA'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE FIRST "THING")
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The woman attempts to charge into Erin. Erin takes out a switchblade. She stabs the woman repeatedly. The woman screams. She falls lifelessly on the ground.
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(SECURITY ROOM SCENE: TONY TRIES TO TAKE THE KEYS)
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Erin takes out her switchblade. She stabs the corpse. It screams. He punches her, throwing her against a wall. Darry helps her up.

The corpse begins approaching Tony. Tony begins backing up. The corpse begins to strike. Darry runs to the corpse. He grabs him. The corpse struggles to break free. Darry snaps his neck. The corpse falls lifelessly on the ground.
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Sorry to pound you with another question, but what did you think of Erin Douglass? I used her in something else (though it was brief) and I plan to use her again. What sort of things should I be aware in the future to make things less cliche?

Whoa, so they're killing the monsters themselves now? Well that's okay on my part, I guess, but if they're gonna do that you gotta show them a lot more traumatized from the experience.

You should describe the corpse as an "it" rather than a "he" It's hard to tell who's grabbing who.

I thought Erin was fine. I too, like to use characters in different scripts, perhaps interconnecting my stories in some way.

To be less cliche you have to stop thinking about the cool parts in other films and start thinking about your own story. That's it.

That, or either take a cliche and change it around your way. I feel I did that with my short Insanity Outcome (in my sig) and I think it came out just fine. I've just tweaked that one a little.  

--Julio

this was good enjoyed reading it. good work.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. What did you like most about it, or, what did you least like about it? What did you think of the characters?

Closed Shut

OK. As I first began to read I was confused about certain things. As the story went on some of the wholes I saw flashes of what could fill them if elaborated on. Let’s starts from the top shall we…

First I found that the intro to all the characters was more of the same with domestic disputes, it only became a problem in that there was too many characters period than the repetitiveness of their problems. A number of times throughout the story in your narrative its: Lucia, Joey, Sammie, Erin, Heather do this. Colby, Omar, Tony, Wendy, do that… I didn’t know who was with who and who was doing what and didn’t care to continually double check cause it was unnecessary to have that many characters in the first place none of them adds anything more then the next. It’s like there just to be killed, for gore. Though don’t get me wrong I understand that in Horror movies there are characters there for that reason, everything follows a formula but, you have to make as though there not, like they actually matter. Is it necessary to have that many characters?

  Also between “Chuckles” and “Cries” with seconds of another I didn’t know when we where being serious, in effective when to be scared. Another thing is there’s a lot of action and not enough suspense we don’t spend much time wondering whether or not something will happen then something just happening. So when something happens like an attack by a monster I wasn’t on edge before hand to be shocked or scared. I suggest establishing the size of the museum floors, rooms, is spacious or cozy so you can use the space of the museum as suspense, tension, & surprise.
  At the beginning I was like wow when everyone was being attacked by all sorts of creatures like what the hell is really going on there was no build up to that, and that was a big event there at the beginning going from 0 to 20 in a split second, the story never reaches that height again in the story. I also thought you had too many monster or not a main one until you introduced the Edward character. And I figured that you had a lot of the right pieces just in the wrong spot. You should edit some and put both the past of Edward at the very beginning before you introduce your characters or as you also introduce Erin cause it’ll be flashback or you could give bites and pieces of this one flashback from the beginning & throughout the story. Also I’m not sure who you thought was the main character like the monster and being too many, first I thought Lucia was the main character then Erin, then Joey. But I think its Erin so she should be introduced first as well.

I wouldn’t say you have to explain why things work against those creatures, but even in horrors there’s a thing called “suspension of belief”. Can’t think for too long that that doesn’t make any sense.

  I had a huge problem with the dialogue, which is just extension of character for as much dialogue as there was plot was never really expanded or as in depth as it should have been neither was character depth, all Heather and that her boyfriend do is argue over something I’m not even sure about in circumstances where they shouldn’t care. Conflict of context between what just happened and character’s making a joke about it…

  On a more technically note but helps… remove words like “Suddenly” or anything that symbolizes hesitation on action cause action is action it just happens. Imagine watching on the screen what’s the difference between “He suddenly jumps…” & “He jumps…” in the context of what you’ll be seeing on the screen. Nothing. And we only write what we can see and hear, so in the context of reading alone, it’s just in the way. It may not seem like much but what it does is turn an eye, ear or two towards unnecessary words, actions, and so fourth.

You judge the best restaurants, as the ones that clean under the table or the corners of the room that little attention, but if they’ve dedicated themselves to that aspect I’m sure everything else is spot on, right. Its like there was no problem before but by adding words or things you’ve just created one. Try removing all adverbs cause they do a lot of telling and no showing action.

  By the end of the story yours reminded me of a Final Destination rather then 80’s horror you should view this movie one more time and see what worked.

Hope I helped. Quesitons for you, whose your main character & his/her goal? main opponent & his/her goal?

Thank you for your time Bumble-Bee, I really appreciate it. Suspense is definitely something that I need to work on, and I will definitely avoid "extra" words in the future. Actually, what you have read is actually an older version of the script. I've made a lot of changes since Gomez's comments, but not enough to re-submit it.

You had trouble deciding who the main character was (and I'm sure you weren't the only one  ). Erin and Lucia share lead. Lucia is more of the lead in the first half, while Erin takes over later . I tried to give them both an equal amount of screen time, because Erin is a character I plan to use again in the future. Erin actually had a very small role in a script I wrote called "YOUTH" (which is also somewhere on this site), but she "disappeared" from the script and this explained why. Joey was never a lead in any way, shape, or form. :p In fact, I actually planned for Tony to be the male lead.

You also didn't like the dialouge. What didn't you like about it and how can I improve this? What keeps this from being something that you could "picture" seeing in a theater and not just some really bad straight-to-DVD thing. And if you could rate the characters in order from liked-to-least liked, how would you rank them?

Sorry if I'm asking for too much, but I am about to start a new script (like right now) but I want to learn more things before I do.

Oh, and when the gate "split" the group, Erin, Milo, Joey, Darry, Kelly, and Wendy were on one side (going to the second floor) while the others were left behind.

This is not my best script (that would probably be "YOUTH"). This is just my attempt at writing a "fun popcorn" movie. I wanted to go for something "easy" and marketable. Looks like I need to do better next time. Thankfully I'm only 19, so I have plenty of time to improve (but I am definitely trying to do as much as I can, as early as I can).

Oh, the questions. These can easily be answered.  




(SPOILERS)

Quoted Text whose your main character & his/her goal?

LUCIA: Before the accident, she went with her friends for entertainment purposes (as well as to earn a class credit). After the incident, she was only concerned with getting out of there alive along with her brother.

ERIN: She was lead to the museum due to her vision power. Before, a group of teens trusted her to save their lives. She later had a vision that, had she stayed and helped the teens, she would've saved them, but at the expense of her own life. Since that was a sacrifice she was not ready to make, she fled which, unfortunately, resulted in the death of the two teens who needed her.

Erin is basically trying to atone for her "sin." She's trying to convince herself that, by helping these people in the museum, she isn't a terrible person.

By the end of the film she grows, because she is no longer afraid of death, and is finally able to open up to people, and to show emotion, something she had stopped herself from doing a long time ago. Finally, she succeeds in helping someone, though she knows it's not enough, and now she's off to help more people.

Quoted Text main opponent & his/her goal?

EDWARD: Edward was pathetic. His opinion of himself was too high, and he wasn't given the fame and praise that he thought he deserved.

He wanted to be the first person to actually create a man-made functioning human being, and he used "secret services" to do so. Though he was unaware that the woman, Elsa (returning from "TAROT CARDS") was actually using black magic, he still knew that she was someone who couldn't be trusted.

As a demon, Edward's only goal to was to become human. After his failed experiment, the spirits of everyone who died at the university became bound there, and the building would "disguise" itself as a museum to lure in humans, and to obtain their souls.

Like Erin said, Edward's spirit, like the others, could not leave the building. After Milo shoots the demon Edward (thus killing him), Edward's spirit was able to wonder. It entered the body of the closest dead person, Wendy. Using Wendy, Edward was able to wreck havoc, which resulted in Lucia getting shot, and then dying. After Wendy is killed (by Milo), Edward leaves her body, and then enters Lucia's body. He uses Lucia's body for the rest of the script. He plans to give birth to himself (to become human again) so he could finally leave the museum.




(END SPOILERS)





Does that help, any? Sorry if this turned out to be so long.

Wow. I've always told myself the hardest part of writing or communication in general is getting that idea in your head out of your mouth or in this case onto paper in a coherent form as possible. I thought that Erin as you explained her goals, motives, stakes was more interesting then how it came across in the script. She's definitely more a lead than Lucia. Which is the point I was making you have too many characters that take up screen time/taking time from a far more interesting character and vital parts to overall plot in Erin.

One thing that frustrated me about dialogue and this is like direct link to character which is direct link to plot its hard to separated the three, but how they'd seem smart in one way by what they say/do then stupid the next. When Lucia comes back to life after what just happened to Wendy it took to long for them to become suspicious of Lucia as result the dialogue rung as untrue, unrealistic. I liken alot of it to impersonation of an impersonation, 80's wrote dialogue how they thought teens talked, then you tried to write how 80's horror getting further and further from being organic.

I like Erin as the best character she seemed on top of her game as to what's going on. My least favorite cause I can't remember all those people were Heather and her boyfriend I think Colby every time they spoke it was about was him trying to talk to her and her calling him names, like every time, several times. And Joey.

There's not a lot of story dialogue as compared to as much is there is going on. No moral dialogue like what the characters believe in relation to a theme or circumstance. No subtext your best opportunity of this was between the NOA who slept with the two brothers...

Example if among the group a conversation broke about trusting another to get threw their ordeal comes up, and whatever anybody says there will be an undertone of the unsaid between Noa and the brother she slept with cause there deceiving the other brother, than Erin could remark about how Edward will try to separate them and take them down, psychically with the wall or emotional, mentally with getting them to not trust one another by reveling secrets of the characters and at first Edward could lie, and when he reveals Noa cheated they group may not believe Edward, Noa will deny it, but when it turns out to be true, then the group will have to question, probe all other secrets Edward exposed about people in the group which would of made for a lot of subtext. Creating more tension would be having Erin guarantee the group she can get them out, then have Edward reveal she's failed before trying to save lives putting' everyone on edge and second guessing everything Erin says.

My curiosity is naggin about getting info on your latest work but I know that revealing something as fragile as an idea can be detramental to proper progression. But will it be another Horror?

No, that's alright. I already have the ideas and planning written, so all I have to do now is just actually write it.

It will be another horror, called "GOBLIN" (unless 'horror' is just something I'm not good at), and while I like having a large cast, I am having serious thoughts about that now. I like the idea of a large set of characters, because it provides a lot of different personalities, ethnicities, etc, which, I believe, will give the audience more characters to root for than just the "pretty little blonde girl and her boyfriend", which is why a lot of my lead characters are minorities (for an example, Lucia and Joey are both Hispanic). Also, I have a habit of "hiding" my lead characters, just because I don't what it to be so predictable as to who is going to survive, and who is going to die.

With everything I have learned here, I will definitely work on suspense, creating relevant/realistic dialouge (which has been a concern before) and a balance in screen time. Also, I will improve on character introductions. In "CLOSED SHUT", the characters just jumped at you all at once. Next time, it will be more gradual.

ETA:

Also, Heather and Colby weren't meant to be liked. The characters were (obviously) forced into a very stressful situation, and some people handle stress differently. For an example, Omar used hostility as a way to cope with his feelings, while Sammie was more emotional.

Heather handled her stress by putting it on Colby. She used this time to reflect on her life, and she became unhappy with the way her life turned out. So, instead of trying to make a change, she blamed her problems on Colby, because she was trying to delude herself into thinking it was Colby's fault. Heather did not want to take responsibility for her own actions. She was the only one at fault for how her life ended up, and she didn't realize that until the very end.

Colby, however, was a moron. He couldn't see (or understand) Heather's game, so he just fed right into it. Truthfully, the man was just doing the best he could, but that wasn't good enough for Heather. His stupidity and overall immature behavior is what kept him from understanding Heather, and gaining her respect.

The two of them were grown (22 and 25), but battled like teenagers. Instead of owning responsibility, the two of them blamed each other. They were fighting over who was "right", as opposed to trying to find a solution, and ironically, never, were either of them "right."

I hope that helps.