Constitution:  Upriver by Anastacia Shimek (stacysailor)  (OWC name - Fandarel)  - Short, Thriller - Lonney Woods is in FBI agent in his late-30s, dark and suave, rugged, yet sophisticated -– a player.  He becomes a legend on the “inside” for his daring and successful work.  But after publicly exposing the President's Chief of Staff, Jeb Barter, for lying to Congress, Lonney is now a marked man, on the run from his own government.   August '07 One Week Challenge entrant. - pdf, format

It's not the best, dude. A lot of technical errors. Those notes first.

Sluglines: Too much info. A slugline should be quick and only include those notes that pertain to shooting. INT/EXT. LOCATION - TIME. That's it. Your slug should read, "EXT. DIRT ROAD - NIGHT" And then include the river and everything else in the next action line. They're always in CAPS. You have a few (pages 2, 3, which are in lowercase.

Including details that shouldn't be in the script. You have a lot of this. Page 1: We can't see that he's just escaped. He can be huffy and puffy, and the audience/reader will infer, but you can't say "because he's just escaped". On page 7, you include "Lonney suddenly..." That line rides that thin line. I know what you mean, and an actor will know it, but it's still telling. Show it some other way, Something like, "He quickly stands and wipes his hands on his pants." That next parenthesis will also let the actor know what to do. Also on page 7, you have the "For some reason..." that doesn't belong in the script at all. The same goes for "He remembers..." on page 9.

One page 1 and 2 you have Markham speaking off screen. It should be "V.O." (voice over). They're not on set. Then on page 6, you have him speaking "O.C." As far as I know, the term Off Camera is used more in television. It should be "O.S." on page 6.

On page 2, you have a new slugline, and Markham's line, but where he is? Is he standing near the desk? Window? Bookshelf? Where's the desk? Describe that first before you  have the dialogue.

Also on page 2 you have that really long POV. They don't belong in specs. It should be something more visual, like this: Markham, through the president's point of view. Action lines aren't in parenthesis. Also, sound effects aren't capitalized.

Parenthesis within dialogue either go on their own line, like this:

BOB
Let's see..
(flips through notebook)
Ah, here we are.

Or like this:

BOB
Let's see...

He flips through the notebook.

BOB
Ah, here we are...

On page 6, you have "All of a sudden..." Of course it happens all of a sudden. I'm not sure the best way to rephrase that, except take "all of a sudden" off. Or just, "Suddenly - gun shots." There's another really long slug. Shorten it.

EXT. SHORE - NIGHT

The boat sinks into the shallow water. Lonney and Shaz hide in the trees.

Now for the story -

It's different, I'll give you that. A government espionage wasn't the first thing to come to mind. It started out okay, and then Shaz started talking. And talking. And talking. I skipped the last few pages, until the Cadillac showed up. It's neat to know that you know what these great President's did (if they actually did them) but don't teach us. It kinda felt like a history class. You're good at writing action sequences, and the last one was good, too, but then it ended. Some kind of resolution would've been nice. A funeral scene. the President getting handcuffed. Something besides just FADE OUT.

I liked the three main characters. I thought they were well written, but they also lacked something. I don't know what.

Terrible is probably the word that best suits this script. You have a conspiracy story that goes all the way to the white house and still the script is basically just a man and a woman talking - talking way too much I might add. The dialogue seems forced and staged, and pretty much everything Shaz says is just down right boring.

What little action there is in this script doesn't work for me. Why would a they (whoever they are) need a sniper to make a spark? That makes no sense what so ever. Just blow the shit up by remote. And why would he until they are outside?

You make the classic mistake of telling instead of showing. Actually this seems like something from a much larger script.

ABSteel has already covered the many format issues. Read and learn.

Wasn't the topic of this OWC a thriller involving a boat? Well, you've got the boat down...

Premise:  Conspiratorial, high concept. Not bad.  6/10

Relation to Theme:  Felt a bit tagged on . The boat wasn't really used in the story                                                              4/10

Story: Sorry to say, but I found this hard work. The dialogue was somewhat overdone and it was quite dry. Because of the high concept a lot of information had to come across in dialogue and this slowed the action considerably. 3/10

This was, at times, like reading a political blog. Lucky for me, I've an interest in politics. Others, though, as evidenced above, are going to find this difficult to stick with.

As a story it, imo, didn't work -- too much talk, not enough action. Loved your discription of the boat, though.

A piece like this, I think, would be better served if written as a feature, allowing the story to slowly unfold.  

You need to put a FADE IN: at the beginning and a FADE OUT. at the end. Those are sort of the “once upon a time” and the “the end” of screenwriting. There are a few exceptions but that’s the norm.

The sluglines thing has already been addressed.

A viewer of the produced film would have no way of knowing Lonney has just escaped (from wherever) unless it’s shown. Screenplays are blueprints for movies. The director needs to be able to go by what you write. If he’s escaped from somewhere - and it’s important for the reader to know - you have to write what the audience is supposed to see and hear. Several times, you give us unfilmable insights.

POVs and CUT TO’s aren’t necessary in a spec script. Those are put into shooting scripts.

If Markham is supposed to be a voice over the phone, it should be a voice over, not an off screen.

Most of the dialogue was very contrived.

The sniper isn’t out there to shoot Lonney? What kind of sniper blows people up? Doesn’t that make him a bomber? What kind of sniper plants a bomb and then goes a distance away so he can shoot the igniter for the bomb? That doesn’t make any sense. If he’s experienced with explosives, why not make it radio controlled?

Lonney foiled an assassination because the assassins changed their minds?! That’s absurd.

Why didn’t the sniper see Lonney and Shaz leave the boat? He must have had some way to see in the dark. Otherwise, how could he have fired the shot that caused the explosion?

I’m sorry but the entire American Revolution wasn’t fought against the idea of a monarchy. True, our nation’s founders rejected the idea of a monarchy based on divine right and bloodline but they were initially at a loss as to how to set up the executive branch of our government and considered modeling it after a monarchy. They almost even gave the president unlimited terms in office. As well, some of our nation’s founders wanted to stay loyal to the King of England. So they struggled with their feelings about monarchies. It wasn’t that black and white.

As for your script, however, it’s extremely talky and the plot is terribly underdeveloped. The description is also inadequate. As well, the talkiness of it is mostly talking heads, characters who aren’t very well distinguished one from the other. It looks as though the writer had something specific to say - himself - not through various characters.

This script is a diatribe that tries unsuccessfully to disguise itself as a script. This would work better as a public speech than a film. I think your passion for your subject matter may have gotten the better of you with this one.


Breanne

This one is loaded with issues. I gather this was meant to be a thriller but I think it's more in league with the Naked Gun series. Lonney cracks jokes at inappropriate times, several people crack hobo jokes, and the bit with the president was definitely intended to be comical. There's also too much description about people looking sexy. This was unintentionally comical. Also, I suspect Shaz is actually Michael Moore in disguise. Half of her dialogue was political commentary and I'm not exactly sure how much of it has to do with the plot. Half of it could have gone. A lot of it was unneccesary and even a little obnoxious. The end was also extremely anti-climactic. All this build-up and what happens? All three protagonists are shot down without notice. You had two more pages to fill. It didn't have to end this way. Finally, I'd like to know why the sniper was in the water and not on shore, hiding in the trees or something.

I don't know what else to say. This one was kind of all over the place. Even the slugs were all over the place. If you need two lines to describe a location, you're in trouble. Anyway, this came off as an overly ambitious piece. Not only do I think there wasn't enough room for a story like this in fifteen pages, I also think the execution was just downright poor. The descriptions were too bulky at times and at others, describing things that couldn't be seen. The dialogue was also both intentionally (I gather) and unintentionall cheesy and at other times, just annoying. The Michael Moore-esque exchange was probably the lowest point of the script. So again, I'm going to say this script was overly ambitious and because of that, it suffers.

Right around the time Lonney and Shaz started quoting large chunks of Madison to each other is when all sense went out the window in this script.  

It's pretty obvious that the writer is not that familiar with screenplay format.  Sluglines need to be concise.  Everything is far too dialogue heavy.  There are various points where description is unfilmmable/inner thoughts.

As for the ending?  Since I wasn't very invested in the characters, I didn't really care who got shot.  It seemed like a cliche way to end a conspiracy story though.  

  

This is a good draft, but it needs work.

You've got a lot of dialogue dealing with ideas about problems with the government.  

I have a lot of interest in conspiracy theories and good ol' boys clubs, but you need to ground the reader into the action and not just go heavy on the dialogue without that element sewn into the fabric of the piece.

Perhaps it's too massive of a subject to try and handle in a 15 page script.

This didn't fit the "thriller" category.

I didn't understand when Shaz says, "The cow went down the mountain."

This didn't have any kind of real ending.

A draft is a draft though and it can only get better.

Sandra

Technical review
This script seemed to be laid out well and to industry standards (and I know the ‘industry’ worries unduly about that!). However, some of the slug lines might be a little wrong. The first one on page 1 may be wrong (although I’m no ‘Doctor Format’) as I didn’t think you put the season information here.

Story review
Not a lot happens when you boil it down. And that’s bad for a thriller. Instead of action, we get page after page of political doggerel. At one point, two characters quote bits of Madison’s text at one another. This is done without either character having an opinion on what is being said – both act as mouthpieces for the text being quoted. It’s dire. Mind you, I’m all for reading an anti-Bush rant…

And whilst I recognise that political thrillers are a great sub-genre, they must be suspenseful.

And yet, the writer exhibits talent elsewhere. The twist on page 2 is nicely done and the comedy with the President at the bottom of page 2 is funny. It’s just a shame that the dialogue becomes a text book later on.

Another flaw is the way that the two leads smoulder and find each other sexy. It’s edging over the fence into parody territory. Another is the clunky exposition from Markham at the bottom of page 1.

I don’t mean to be so negative about a script – it just irks me that there is obviously some talent at work here, but a talent mired down with other concerns than writing a thriller.