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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Horror Scripts  ›  Friday the 13th: The Beginning Moderators: bert
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  Author    Friday the 13th: The Beginning  (currently 5229 views)
Don
Posted: June 24th, 2008, 6:49pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Friday the 13th: The Beginning by Jordan Wiebe (theboywhocouldfly) - Horror -  Based on the screenplay by Victor Miller - Camp Crystal lake, a place where children go for new experiences and to make new friends.  And on this lake, when a young boy dies, a legend is born. 115 pages - pdf, format


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Zack
Posted: June 24th, 2008, 7:38pm Report to Moderator
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You already know my thoughts on the script Jordan, but I thought I'd do a quick recap to let other know what I think.

I think this is a great fan fic. The prequel half of the script is perfect. It's dramatic, touching, and haunting. I really enjoyed your take on Jason and his Mother. You developed them both very well and I felt for young Jason when he drowned.

The remake half isn't quite as strong. it seems like the original 90 minute movie smashed into 45 minutes. Because of this it seemed a bit rushed. That's not to say the remake half doesn't have its strong points. The kills will satisfy any Friday the 13th fan and I actually think you developed the group of counselors pretty well considering how much space you had. And the final chase scene was very suspenseful.

All in all a good prequel/remake. I enjoyed it.

~Zack~
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ReaperCreeper
Posted: June 24th, 2008, 8:01pm Report to Moderator
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Jordan, seriously, what the hell is this? This movie is already being produced. It is pointless to me. I decided to read it because I thought it would be a fan prequel by reading the title. And it was--for the first thirty pages. Those pages were solid and nicely-written as is to be expected from you, but you completely threw that away when you decided to transcribe the original movie and took out the parts you didn't like (and perhaps modified some deaths too? I cannot remmber the original Friday quite vivdly). If you're gonna call it the beginning, make it the beginning and don't turn it into half and origin story/half a half-assed remake. It was a complete waste because you had a nice take on the origin of Jason and Pamela's killings which never came full-circle.  

If you were going to do what you did, you should've just called it Friday the 13th--not "The Beginning". The title is completely misleading. I know I might sound quite harsh but I cannot believe you actually made your remake segment exactly like the original. The dialogue at the diner was exactly the same as I remember it in the original Friday, you just trimmed some fat off of it. Sorry, but this left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. 4/10

--Julio
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Shelton
Posted: June 24th, 2008, 8:08pm Report to Moderator
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Well, this oughta be an interesting review.

I'm so far removed from the source material that I won't be able to draw many comparisons.  That could be a good thing though, since I'm sure you'll get a fair number of those.

Technically, to start off, you should cap the people who are milling about the opening intro.  They're doing a little bit more than just standing around.  These are featured extras.

This is a pretty fast read, and I'm definitely breezing through it.  I think I just hit the end of the first act, which seems to be at page 52 unless I missed something else.  Nothing really struck me as a break prior to that though.

Knowing what I do know about the story, I think you've done a good job of adding in some foreshadowing elements and building on the characters a bit.  There are some spots that could be trimmed down a little I think, but no big deal.

After reading through the 1957 portion and getting into those characters so much, I found it pretty odd to jump forward 20 years and then have to start learning about an entirely new set of characters.  A whole lot of character development here, definitely.

Reading the ending, I noticed that you left a pretty big part out of the original.  Actually, you left what is probably one of the biggest crap your pants moments in cinematic history out...hahaha.  What you have works, but it makes it seem more like a drama than a horror.

Anyway, I'm going to pick up the original at the video store probably in the next few days since this got me interested in checking it out again.

Overall, a little beefy in spots, but good and I enjoyed it.


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"I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper." - Steve Martin
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The boy who could fly
Posted: June 25th, 2008, 3:32am Report to Moderator
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Thanks for the reads and comments Zack, Gomez, Shelton and Pia.  This was kind of an experiment for me, to try and do an adaptation in a way, kinda like what Rob Zombie tried with Halloween, I just hope mine isn't as hateful and dreary, I tried to make most of the people as real and normal as possible.

I know the most common question I will get is "why do a fanfic?" and the answer is cause I can   I wanted to know if I could adapt another film, it was pretty interesting to do.

I do know that the script feels like two separate stories, I kinda wanted it to have that feel but maybe I should have found a better way to blend them together.

I know that fanboys will probably not like this but I wanted to give Jason a new angle.

Thanks again for the reads and comments, it probably needs a little trimming and maybe some more fresh idea's.


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Shelton
Posted: June 25th, 2008, 9:13am Report to Moderator
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I know the most common question I will get is "why do a fanfic?"



What most people fail to realize, is that a good chunk of a screenwriter's salary is usually earned via assignments, or writing someone else's idea.  True, this is something that is pretty much not sellable, but at least you know you're able to generate a script based on existing material.


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George Willson
Posted: June 25th, 2008, 10:41am Report to Moderator
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I'm probably going to have a different perspective on this one. Unlike several of the others, I've seen EVERY movie out of the series...and to make it more amusing, I disliked most of them. But for some reason, I have them all on DVD at home. I'm such a freak, sometimes. Oh well.

Now that the peanut gallery has stopped saying, "Sometimes?", we can move on.

I'll have to say, I did chuckle at your description of "Frank Capra would love this neighborhood." He was a freak too. Anyway, my first real thought is to consider your target audience. This is a fan fic aimed at fans of the series, so the ironic commentary that foreshadows the "summer you'll never forget" comes off as very silly because we already know what will happen to him this summer. If you lose every bit of that type of dialogue, your audience will appreciate it.

"Pretty handy with a knife"? If I can request anything, I repeat the former comment. Please, oh please, dump the ironic dialogue. It would actually be more dramatic if she were extra careful with knives and the forthcoming incident caused her to overcome that fear or caution. Maybe she doesn't like knives at all at this point.

Having reached the end of day one (aka page 20), I'm thinking you're pulling some cliches here. You're setting up the characters to be shadows of what they'll become, which is not bad, but oh so typical. What would work better from a dramatic perspective is if they are polar opposites of what they'll become and their experiences change them (clearly, for the worse). Rather being afraid of the water, imagine Jason being very, very confident of his swimming abilities. After all, he swam in the family or neighborhood pool, right? Surely, he can handle a lake. Well, maybe he overestimated his abilities and while trying to swim across the lake, he got tired. That never happens in a public pool. They're too small. Granted, I haven't reach that point in the story, but we'll see if I'm right about what you'll do for the drowning...

Yeah, I figured it would be something like that. Poor kid gets in over his head, but if you'll recall from the movies, Jason is always seen struggling in the middle of the lake. How'd he get there, hm? I know it's a new take on it, and in all fairness, what actually happened isn't ever discussed with any level of detail beyond the counselors screwing around, so your take isn't a bad one. You just need to consider what people would NOT expect, and through that methodology, you'll find something even better. Moving on...

You need to consider the one year later scene... It's only one scene, and brief to be sure. Only about as long as the opening scene of the original film, as a matter of fact, but you used total strangers and a different venue than in the original film. Consider this: use the same location as the original film had where they're fooling around in the loft, but use Howard and Phyllis. It provides the necessary relation to the original, ties it in rather neatly, and gives some rather immediate satisfaction, since you're shifting the story anyway.

Oh, now here's an odd switch. You turned Alice into Steve's wife, and names the cook girl at the beginning, Jenny. Why do that? I thought for a moment making them married was a nice touch, but only if her role remained. Hm, I'll read on.

I see you didn't appreciate Ralph surviving the first movie...

Check 109. You have ALICE in place of PAMELA for the dialogue. And dude, kneeing a girl in the groin is a pointless gesture. And it appears that you may have started with a copy of the script since you left in the line from the officer that Alice's folks were on their way up. Not as likely if she's in her late 30's.

Ok, my overall impression is kind of how I felt at the end of the Halloween remake with the deaths. You did the same thing here that they did there. You reduced the suspenseful build up to the murders into a quick knife slash. Rob Zombie's Halloween did that with almost every single killing in that there was no long slow build into the inevitable, but a quick zip and it's over. The washroom scene in F13 was one of the most suspenseful in the film. You truncated it down to a couple pages and sucked all the suspense out of it. Alice's (your Jenny) ride to the camp was another of those instances where it was suspenseful originally, but it was zipped again down to a simple knife slash. From that, you also miss the setup of the jeeps (you know what I mean).

A thought I had here was that rather than remake the original, you could just show what happened in the following year. It's called Camp Blood before the first film, so why not switch it all to 1957 and some of the original counselors coming back and being more attentive this time. It would be a far tighter script, use the same characters throughout, and really give Ralph something to freak out about. This would also give your story some more originality since you'd be free to do with the characters as you please.

How to end it without wiping out the villain? Check out the original Black Christmas. While it doesn't end perfectly, it also never shows or defeats the killer. When the movie ends, he's still out there. Remember that Pamela's only goal is to prevent the camp from opening. After a massacre, she will have accomplished that, so nothing further will happen, and no one will have caught her.

My only other thought was that the further we went on, the more typos you had. And not the misspelling kind either. You had the type that spell checkers don't catch. "To" for "too" happened a lot, for instance, but you got to the point where you were ripe with typos. Might be worth re-reading yourself to at least clean those up.

Just my two cents.


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Dreamscale
Posted: June 25th, 2008, 9:59pm Report to Moderator
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I got up to page 59...that's where I'm going to stop and I'll give you my review and advice up to there.  I've read the reviews and see that basically, after where I am, it's a carbon copy (for the most part) of the original movie, but in an extremely edited, shortened version.

I don't want to be harsh or negative.  What I'm going to say is what I feel and I hope it helps advance your screenwriting techniques.  I see lots of issues here though, and I'm actually quite surprised that no one else has pointed these out...especially George.

Your first 55 pages are all an intro to the original story (movie).  Although they definitely add a new life to Jason and Mrs. Voorhees. there really isn't much here...and at 55 pages, it's hugely inflated.

This is what I want to comment on, and give you some critique.

The standard "rule of thumb" is that 1 page of script equals 1 minute of screen time.  I personally don't agree with this completely, as I know that based on a number of factors, that could go up or down quite a bit.  But, for the most part, we have to assume that there is some truth to this assumption...and I know there is!

Let's talk about the factors that can change the norm in screen time vs. page.

Heavy dialogue based scripts - When characters speak long and multiple lines, the screen time will increase, unless the actors are part time auctioneers.  No one can (or would) speak in normal conversation extremely quickly, and when you have many, many lines of dialogue on a page, it's going to mean that the screen time for that "page" is going to be longer than a minute...sometimes it could be alot longer than a single minute.  With long dialogue, there aren't many line breaks, which means more words on the page.

Heavy action scenes - Unless you're writing in an extremely exact or flowery nature, most action scenes that contain "alot" going on, will have more screen time than the average 1 minute per page.  Like in a war movie, where tons of secondary characters are interacting, your written "action" and "description" on a single page will most likely  take more than a minute of screen time.

In your script, you have inflated the length of the written script vs. the actual screen time of the movie hugely.

Your dialogue, for the most part is 1 line long per character.  Many of these are only a few words long.  Therefor, you are using many line breaks, and lines in general, for something that the actor will spout off in less than a few seconds.  The more interaction between characters when this is occurring, means the more lines and pages for extremely quick conversation, with little happening other than the exchanges.

In your action and description segments, you have, for some reason, chosen to write in single lines, as apposed to paragraphs, and used line breaks for the next line.  In many instances, you've used literally double the lines that you could have if you had used standard paragraphs.

This makes for an extremely easy read, and definitely follows the "show more white than black on the page" guideline, but it is very decieving in overall content of the actual movie that we're trying to view in our head.

For instance, through your first 10 pages (and these first 10 pages probably have the most actual content in your script, because most is setup and description), you have 1,690 words, and 371 lines of text.  Now, I'm no expert, and do not pertain to be anything of the sort, but I'd say that your word count is roughly 65%-75% of where it should "probably be", and your line count (which is more important, as it takes up more space on the actual page) is roughly 50%-60% of where it should be.

What does this mean?  To me, it means that your intro (the beginning...the back story of Jason and Mrs, Voorhees), which goes about 55 pages, is actually only about 25-30 minutes of screen time.  It could actually be less, based on the fact that not much is really going on here.  Your entire script is 114 pages, so this "intro" is just about half you entire movie, meaning it would most likely clock in at less than an hour.  If the 2nd half of your script is truly a retread on the original movie, than that portion of "your" movie is another 25-30 minutes (unless you radically changed your structure and formatting), which is basically 1/3 of the orginal movie's length, meaning you've really carved it up.

I hope this makes sense to you and you understand what I'm trying to tell you.  I don't know why you chose to make this script look so much longer than it really is, because if you attempted to add to the original, while still maintaining most of the original content, you should have done just the opposite, and written in a way that would allow you to put more on a single page in terms of content, than in terms of more empty lines and white space.

Hope this helps and makes sense.  I do like what you wrote about Jason's camp experience and backstory of why Mrs. Voorhees became who and what she did, but it's just too many pages, and not nearly enough content or action for me.

Best of luck to you.
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George Willson
Posted: June 26th, 2008, 8:04am Report to Moderator
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Having read Dreamscale's post, I was at least curious, since page length is actually something that people look at from the start. Technical rules aside, that is something worth evaluating, so it's actually a good catch.

Does one page of script equal one minute of screen time? No, that's an average. That's also why scripts are written the way they are. On average, when the entire script is looked at, the total number of pages will often equal the total screen time, give or take a few minutes. If it's take, hey, you can pad it with credits if the story's good enough. But this page vs time ratio is one of those reasons format is so important.

Are there some places here where the description could be condensed? Yeah, there are several instance where some short descriptive sentences are part of the previous sentence and could be combined into an action paragraph. Will this necessarily trim the film down to under an hour? I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, but for the author, I think it would at least be a worthwhile exercise to cut down those lines and see how many pages you have left.


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The boy who could fly
Posted: June 26th, 2008, 10:22am Report to Moderator
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Thanks for the reads and comments everyone, most appreciated.


Quoted from George Willson

You need to consider the one year later scene... It's only one scene, and brief to be sure. Only about as long as the opening scene of the original film, as a matter of fact, but you used total strangers and a different venue than in the original film. Consider this: use the same location as the original film had where they're fooling around in the loft, but use Howard and Phyllis. It provides the necessary relation to the original, ties it in rather neatly, and gives some rather immediate satisfaction, since you're shifting the story anyway.


I was thinking of that, but I figured they wouldn't be working there after what happened to Jason, I think they would wanna be as far away from that place as possible, maybe two of the other counselors.


Quoted from George Willson

Oh, now here's an odd switch. You turned Alice into Steve's wife, and names the cook girl at the beginning, Jenny. Why do that? I thought for a moment making them married was a nice touch, but only if her role remained. Hm, I'll read on.


I changed most of the names in the script, i dunno why, just felt like it, i kept some key players names the same though.


Quoted from George Willson

And dude, kneeing a girl in the groin is a pointless gesture.


haha, maybe but i always wanted to see a girl knee another girl in the groin


Quoted from George Willson

How to end it without wiping out the villain? Check out the original Black Christmas. While it doesn't end perfectly, it also never shows or defeats the killer. When the movie ends, he's still out there. Remember that Pamela's only goal is to prevent the camp from opening. After a massacre, she will have accomplished that, so nothing further will happen, and no one will have caught her.


i think pamela has to die or why would jason come back for revenge.


Quoted from Dreamscale

Your first 55 pages are all an intro to the original story (movie).  Although they definitely add a new life to Jason and Mrs. Voorhees. there really isn't much here...and at 55 pages, it's hugely inflated.

The standard "rule of thumb" is that 1 page of script equals 1 minute of screen time.  I personally don't agree with this completely, as I know that based on a number of factors, that could go up or down quite a bit.  But, for the most part, we have to assume that there is some truth to this assumption...and I know there is!

Let's talk about the factors that can change the norm in screen time vs. page.

Heavy dialogue based scripts - When characters speak long and multiple lines, the screen time will increase, unless the actors are part time auctioneers.  No one can (or would) speak in normal conversation extremely quickly, and when you have many, many lines of dialogue on a page, it's going to mean that the screen time for that "page" is going to be longer than a minute...sometimes it could be alot longer than a single minute.  With long dialogue, there aren't many line breaks, which means more words on the page.

Heavy action scenes - Unless you're writing in an extremely exact or flowery nature, most action scenes that contain "alot" going on, will have more screen time than the average 1 minute per page.  Like in a war movie, where tons of secondary characters are interacting, your written "action" and "description" on a single page will most likely  take more than a minute of screen time.

In your script, you have inflated the length of the written script vs. the actual screen time of the movie hugely.

Your dialogue, for the most part is 1 line long per character.  Many of these are only a few words long.  Therefor, you are using many line breaks, and lines in general, for something that the actor will spout off in less than a few seconds.  The more interaction between characters when this is occurring, means the more lines and pages for extremely quick conversation, with little happening other than the exchanges.

In your action and description segments, you have, for some reason, chosen to write in single lines, as apposed to paragraphs, and used line breaks for the next line.  In many instances, you've used literally double the lines that you could have if you had used standard paragraphs.

This makes for an extremely easy read, and definitely follows the "show more white than black on the page" guideline, but it is very decieving in overall content of the actual movie that we're trying to view in our head.

For instance, through your first 10 pages (and these first 10 pages probably have the most actual content in your script, because most is setup and description), you have 1,690 words, and 371 lines of text.  Now, I'm no expert, and do not pertain to be anything of the sort, but I'd say that your word count is roughly 65%-75% of where it should "probably be", and your line count (which is more important, as it takes up more space on the actual page) is roughly 50%-60% of where it should be.

What does this mean?  To me, it means that your intro (the beginning...the back story of Jason and Mrs, Voorhees), which goes about 55 pages, is actually only about 25-30 minutes of screen time.  It could actually be less, based on the fact that not much is really going on here.  Your entire script is 114 pages, so this "intro" is just about half you entire movie, meaning it would most likely clock in at less than an hour.  If the 2nd half of your script is truly a retread on the original movie, than that portion of "your" movie is another 25-30 minutes (unless you radically changed your structure and formatting), which is basically 1/3 of the orginal movie's length, meaning you've really carved it up.

I hope this makes sense to you and you understand what I'm trying to tell you.  I don't know why you chose to make this script look so much longer than it really is, because if you attempted to add to the original, while still maintaining most of the original content, you should have done just the opposite, and written in a way that would allow you to put more on a single page in terms of content, than in terms of more empty lines and white space.


Hmmm, i guess on the page count thing is i dont have my paragraphs over 3 lines, i dont like large paragraphs, it may make the script a big longer, but i don't think that much, for me it makes it an easier read so i do stick with the 3 line rule for myself, just the way I am,  I have to admit im not really one that knows everything about the technical stuff, i just do it the way thats best for me, im kinda stubborn in that way....lol.

thanks again for the reads and comments


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Dreamscale
Posted: June 26th, 2008, 12:44pm Report to Moderator
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Hey "Me", I'm not saying that someone wouldn't read this because it's too easy of a read, but I am saying that it's very obvious that the script length (page length) is padded and bloated, and the actual screen time would be far less than the average 1 minute per 1 page of text.  I mean look at the intro alone..it runs 55 pages!  Do you think that intro would really run 55 minutes of screen time?  It wouldn't even be remotely close.

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Dreamscale
Posted: June 26th, 2008, 12:53pm Report to Moderator
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Hey Jordan, I understand that we all write the way we like to. No problem with that at all.  But, do you agree that by writing "paragraphs" that consist of 1 line of description, a line break, another 1 line of description, another line break, etc., that you are padding the length of the written script quite a bit?

As I said, your script clocks in at 114 pages.  The first 55 are an intro.  Do you see your intro running anywhere near 55 minutes of screen time?  I don't see it going much more than 25 or 30 at the max, adn if that's the fisrt half, then the entire movie would be less than an hour.  Do you agree with this or am I missing something here?

Just curious how you see this.
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Dreamscale
Posted: June 26th, 2008, 1:39pm Report to Moderator
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Me, I understand about an easy read vs. a hard read, and more white on the page vs more black, but this one is a different story for me.  It's just way over the top padded with line breaks.  If that's the style of the writer, that's cool, but you have to understand that the actual runtime of this movie is very short compared to the 114 pages of text.

That's all I'm trying to say.
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The boy who could fly
Posted: June 26th, 2008, 2:19pm Report to Moderator
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I know it wouldn't run 114 min, probably more like 100 min, the original script was 85 pages and it had a lot of line breaks in it, so I know this would not run 60 min, I seen a lot of scripts with 1 or 2 line descriptions and broken down a lot, for me I like it that way, just makes it easier is all.


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Dreamscale
Posted: June 26th, 2008, 5:20pm Report to Moderator
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Jordan, I don't mean to be kicking a dead horse here, but I'm just confused.  You say you see your movie running around 100 minutes.  Based on that, are you saying that your intro (55 pages, just about literally half the entire dcript) is going to run roughly 50 minutes then?
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