Munich Crisis: On the Razor's Edge by Jamie Gardiner (jamier) - Drama - Hitler's Germany moves to swallow up weak Czechoslovakia in the year before WW2. Chamberlain is an ill, weak Prime Minister who nonetheless finds the conviction to arrest Britain's seemingly unstoppable march to war. In the first example of shuttle diplomacy, and with the world watching, he flies to Germany to do a deal. 61 pages - pdf, format


Munich Crisis: On the Razor's Edge by Jamie Gardiner (jamier) - Drama - Hitler's Germany moves to swallow up weak Czechoslovakia in the year before WW2. Chamberlain is an ill, weak Prime Minister who nonetheless finds the conviction to arrest Britain's seemingly unstoppable march to war. In the first example of shuttle diplomacy, and with the world watching, he flies to Germany to do a deal. 61 pages - doc, format

This is my first script, and any feedback is very, very welcome.

I am new to these boards, but am going to start posting reviews. If you get the chance to look at Munich, let me know what you would like me to look at of yours.

Jamie R,

I've already seen you post in other threads so I know you're reading - I wanted to say kudos because most writers with new scripts put them up, get a read or two, and we never hear from them.

Ufortunately I enjoy the subject of history in non-fiction form (i.e., books) so I don't know if I'll be able to appreciate your script. I did however want to say to you the above, and that I hope you get some reads. Judging by your reviews in other posts you're a pretty fair assessor of the craft.

Good luck - AJR

Thanks, AJR. Shame the subject isn't your bag. I'm a big fan of these historical dramas - Into the Storm, which dealt with Churchill in WW2, was brilliant. And the movie coming out about Lincoln based on the Team of Rivals book also sounds great - I think Spielberg is directing.

Munich is interesting historically (and hopefully dramatically) because you had such a clash of personalities. Chamberlain was an old-school, wing-collared, Victorian-style establishment Prime Minister. Hitler was a ruthless upstart who conned Chamberlain out of concession after concession. Of his signing of the Munich agreement, Hitler said "I liked the old gentleman [Chamberlain] so much that I gave him my autograph!"

Hi Jamie,

While I’m not all that well schooled in the particulars of this particular event in history, I typically enjoy this sort of stuff so I gave it a read this morning.  I’m still very new to this game as well, but overall I thought you did a really good job with this.  I really enjoyed it.

Below are a couple of typos/tips that I picked out while reading.

P. 7 – ALFRED - Prime Minister? S/B a period I believe.

I noticed you continued to CAP names, particularly CHAMBERLAIN.  I believe you only have to cap when first introducing them.  After that you can leave lower case.

P. 12 – ISMAY - Mobilisation papers. They need signed. Now.   S/B “They need to be signed”.

P. 18 - WILSON shrugs his shoulders and picks up the telephone.  Not a big deal, but I might re-work this action sequence here.  Almost makes Wilson seem indifferent which I don’t think is your intent.  

Interpreter – Hmm, I’m not sure if this is the proper format for this type of thing.  Part of me wants to suggest that you simply have them converse in English, but I realize that you have gone to great lengths to be historically accurate.  Also, I noticed the subtle change in the interpreter’s language when Hitler began to rage.  I would suggest just checking this out to make sure that it is in the proper format since it reads a little repetitive.

P. 25 – “The all smoke, and a cloud of smoke hangs over the room.”  S/B THEY all smoke...

P. 37 – Ice ships.  Cool.  Going to have to do a little research on these bad boys.

P. 39 – “Then it becomes apparent that the outburst was a fantasy that happened only in CHAMBERLAIN’s head.”  I’m not sure that this is how you would write a fantasy/dream sequence.  Same with Chamberlain looking out the plane window and imagining London being bombed.  As a reader, I certainly get the angle you are going for and I can visualize it, but you may need to do a little research into the proper formatting.  Sorry I can’t be more specific.

Obviously Churchill was a larger than life character, but I thought he may have been a bit over the top in this instance.  I think there is so much to work with in real life there, that you can temper it down a bit.  

That said, I thought you did a really nice job with Chamberlain.  What we saw here was a man who was terribly conflicted and at times dare I say a little bit overmatched.  His motives were genuine and his heart in the right place, but ultimately...

Right now, you are kind of in no man’s land with regard to the length of this screenplay.  It’s too long to be a short and too short to be a feature.  I think you need to decide what you want to do with it.  You might consider shortening this one and then creating a series that follows through on the decisions that were made in Munich.  Just a thought.  BTW, I loved the way you ended this one.  

Anyway, really nice job on this Jamie, and all the more successful considering it was your first attempt.  I thought it was well written and it def got me interested in the whole affair.  I’m going to do a little more research on the subject.  Good Luck.


Craig

Hi Craig,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to go through it. Your feedback is really useful, and I am going to make changes on the basis of it.

1.     Typos. Absolutely right – I will correct these

2.     Interpreter. I’m going to have to investigate how this should be dealt with. I want to keep the interpreter – it’s realistic, and also I think it helps preserve the distance and lack of understanding between Chamberlain and Hitler. But it would be good if there was a way of formatting it so it isn’t so repetitive. Maybe I should just put the actual German in? I’ll have to look into it

3.     Ice ships. Believe it or not this is accurate. Prototypes were tested somewhere in Canada, but the ships were never built because there wasn’t time and because wood pulp was in such scarcity

4.     Formatting of vision. I’m sure you’re right. Funny how you can have a question mark next to something in your head, but only get jolted into action when someone else points it out

5.     Churchill over the top. I thought this scene added a bit of colour to the script. But I’ll reread it with your comment in my mind and maybe tone some parts down

6.     Length. I see this as falling into the one-time drama category. I thought about stretching it into a feature, but there wasn’t an obvious subplot that I could see to do this. I take your point about shortening it with a view to a series; the problem is that the immediate run up to war has already been dealt with quite a lot, for example in The Gathering Storm. For some reason the Munich Crisis is a gap in a subject that has otherwise been dealt with extensively

I really appreciate your thoughts. It’s incredibly useful to have someone else look at it.

I’m going to take a look at one of yours – I’ll try to do it tonight, but I might not be able to get it done until tomorrow.

Thanks,
Jamie

Hey Jamie,

No worries on the read.  Like I said I enjoyed it and it was my pleasure.

I was doing a little reading up on the ice ships.  Pretty crazy.  Though they could'nt help but think that they could have used a little better safety when demonstrating!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

I noticed that you wrote your screenplay in word and it came out great.  Thought I would just mention celtx which is a free downloadable screenwriting software.  Like I said, I didn't notice any formatting problems with your screenplay and it read fine, but this might be helpful if only to save you time.  It must have been a pain to write 60 pages in word and format properly.

http://celtx.com/

P.S.  Regarding the interpreter sections you could probably post a thread int he screenwriting class section to see if anyone could point you in the right direction.

Craig

Hi Jamie,

Thanks for reading Thief and giving the writing team feedback. Greatly appreciated.

I read the first five pages and stopped. It just wasn’t interesting to me. My read was slowed down by your formatting.

GET PDF -- Use of MS Word causes all the revision underlines to display on the document. Seeing that many underlines causes me to be turned off right away. If you are going to continue to use MS Word, download a PDF document converter so everyone see the pages in the same format. I recommend CutePDF writer.  Google it, get it. I suggest converting your script to PDF and resubmitting it. Just add a note to your resubmission and it’ll be put on in place of your original submission. Not everyone here has MS Word or wants to work with its formatting issues.

GET CELTX -- Free formatting software is available. The most used here is Celtx. Again, Google it, get it. The bonus is that it comes with a PDF converter.

READ A GOOD SCRIPTWRITING HANDBOOOK – I recommend David Trottier’s A SCREENWRITER’S BIBLE as a start. It’ll answer your questions re: translations and help get the specs down correctly. For example: Page numbers go in the upper right corner, the title page is the only page where the title should be listed, character names are capitalized only when first introduced in the action/description lines, scene headings use hyphens not periods, too many parentheticals, etc. A reference book is invaluable.

These comments will help you get more reads if the formatting is up to snuff. (I actually saw this script when it was first listed but passed when I noted it wasn't in PDF format or my kind  of story.)

Then it’ll be the story that’ll be king.

Hope this helps not hinders.

Gary

I started reading this, and I do plan to finish. However, i agree that the formatting is a distraction. The title should not be on every page, and the character names only need to be in CAPS when they are first introduced.

WWII always intrigues me, so I will finish this in a couple days and return with some comments about the story.  

Thanks - I look forward to reading your thoughts on it!

Jamie