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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    One Week Challenge    October, 2010 One Week Challenge  ›  You Can Never Leave - OWC
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  Author    You Can Never Leave - OWC  (currently 3029 views)
Don
Posted: October 18th, 2010, 7:46pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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You Can Never Leave by George Willson (tubkas) - Short, Horror - Chris stumbles into an old house for help and finds himself trapped. - pdf, format


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DarrenJamesSeeley
Posted: October 18th, 2010, 9:10pm Report to Moderator
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As far as short scripts go, this isn't too bad. I wanted to know and discover a bit more. It really didn't rock my boat or anything, but it was interesting. As far as the OWC goes? It doesn't quite cut it. It still made it in, in spite of having more than three characters...and I'm going under the idea that "actors" are playing multiple roles, but even so, the numerous characters in a nine pager detract from the focus on the three characters first introduced.  I didn't mind some characters speaking different languages (although they should be in English) but it just didn't work for me in the long run.

Still, the script appears to be error free and does have an interesting premise.


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Baltis.
Posted: October 18th, 2010, 9:21pm Report to Moderator
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Typical story in most every case, not a bad thing as I believe the challenge didn't call for one.  But this is one I've heard many times in my day.  And I'm not even old enough to tell legends and lore just yet...  Just yet.

Anyways, a few things bothered me here.  The way you'd bring in Lightening and then stop it with a new sentence.  If need be toss it on a line by itself.  People will say "Orphan" this and that, whatever... They're not that bad.  And Speilberg, believe this or not, is notorious for using them.  So is Syd Field.  Then you'll have someone come in and say "He/they has/have the bank to do so"

Again, whatever.

I also don't think you should speak in Spanish.  I mean, it looks cool and sounds cool, but it's not going to win you any points.  Just use (in native tongue) and then say it in English.  I learned this after having a screenplay of mine professionally critiqued and it cost me 500 bucks.  Imagine my disdain when I got back 10 pages full of red marks... and then a bank statement withdrawal of 500 bucks.

You learn quick.

Anyways, another decent stab but nothing that stands out above the the crowd right now.
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khamanna
Posted: October 18th, 2010, 9:23pm Report to Moderator
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The ending reveals much. I was going to complain about villains' motive but there came the ending and the ending of it is just great.

Really enjoyed it. Could do without Pierre and seniora Shavez perhaps.
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jwent6688
Posted: October 18th, 2010, 9:47pm Report to Moderator
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George,

Can't say i got this at all. Definitely agree with Balt that if you write English, stick with English. When they speak spanish or french just use the wrylie (In French).

Didn't get any tension or creepiness from this script. Just my opinion. Though it was well written. You also, didn't adhere to the rules IMO. far more then three characters. This felt like the song "Hotel California". Yet, that didn't payoff very well either. Sorry I didn't like it. Thought you got a bit too fancy with your language. If they said something important in those moments, I didn't get it. Might have ruined this script for me.

James


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Ryan1
Posted: October 18th, 2010, 11:18pm Report to Moderator
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George,

I think you needed to increase the tension more.  I was hoping for sort of a slow buildup of dread but never got it.  I was a bit confused  over who these various characters were and what they were doing in the house.  Would have loved to have a universal translator while I was reading this.  The ending was more ironic than unnerving.

Didn't get this sentence:

"A slice rents one of his pants legs revealing
a wicked gash in his leg."

You broke the three actor rule.  But then again, so did I in my script.  So be it.  Anyway, you knocked this out in one week, so good job on that

Revision History (1 edits)
Ryan1  -  October 18th, 2010, 11:44pm
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George Willson
Posted: October 18th, 2010, 11:46pm Report to Moderator
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For the record, before I wrote this, I read the rules carefully. The rules state that there are three actors: one female, two male (one in a wheelchair). In the various scenes, you'll note that it never breaks this rule. You'll note that neither Pierre nor Franz walk because they're played by the actor in the wheelchair who also plays Michael. Delena also plays Gina and Senora Chavez. The challenge does not limit the characters. It limits the resources. None of the overlaps appear in any scenes together.

And as for the other languages, with the exception of Chavez and the bit at the beginning, they all say the same thing, and it's the title of the script. As for Chavez, her Spanish dialogue is extraneous and simply for character. Her visual cues tell you what she's saying. The introductory Italian dialogue becomes obvious when Chris wakes up. I could have either said "Is he ok?" "I don't know." in the voiceover, or add a little mystery by giving that throwaway dialogue in something weird. No one delivers any exposition or important information in the other languages. They're little more than sound bytes. It's important not to fixate on them.

I hadn't read the beast of the OWC thread, so I don't know how, if any, conversation over multiple roles went, but I had the extra characters deliberately to use the actors in multiple roles. I notice that people don't get too deep into these OWC scripts. You burn through, give it a yay or nay and move on. In fact, I doubt most of the previous readers will see this comment. I admit to likely being guilty of it as well. I use these OWC's for inspiration to write something, and so I did...in about an hour on Thursday night. Hey, I proofed it on Friday.

Back to the story, consider the duplicate roles were all whom Chris interacted with. They are all Michael and Delena, even Gina. Why? Because she was already there too. The same person has multiple dialects? Is in more than one place at the same time? Perhaps you saw multiple roles when they're all the same. Why else would you cast that way? The house has absorbed many over the years...and these are their shadows, though as individuals, they no longer exist.

Suspense? Yeah, it could use more. Hotel California? Yeah, that crossed my mind.

EDIT: "A slice rents one of his pants legs revealing a wicked gash in his leg." In short, his pants are ripped and you can see a cut on his leg.


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Baltis.
Posted: October 18th, 2010, 11:52pm Report to Moderator
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Quoted from George Willson
For the record, before I wrote this, I read the rules carefully. The rules state that there are three actors: one female, two male (one in a wheelchair). In the various scenes, you'll note that it never breaks this rule. You'll note that neither Pierre nor Franz walk because they're played by the actor in the wheelchair who also plays Michael. Delena also plays Gina and Senora Chavez. The challenge does not limit the characters. It limits the resources. None of the overlaps appear in any scenes together.


Clever... Makes sense to me.  But, to be honest, I never thought the rule was broken.  I didn't use more than 3 in mine, but I know a few who have and I think a technicality would also be to never have more than 3 on screen at once.

So, yeah, ways around things abound.  You did good work, though.
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screenrider
Posted: October 19th, 2010, 12:50am Report to Moderator
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George,

This was different.   Not sure if I liked it or not.  One thing I do know, the foriegn language was a turn off.  Also I wish you'd get different screenwriting software like Celtix or something.  Your font looks like it's ten years old.   I've got Movie Magic, too.  I don't use it anymore since I've switched to Celtix.  Anyway, good effort.   Tragic ending.   I'll be curious to hear your take on it.  The end.  The beginning.  Eternity.   Dangerous road out there.
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Ryan1
Posted: October 19th, 2010, 1:42am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from George Willson
For the record, before I wrote this, I read the rules carefully. The rules state that there are three actors: one female, two male (one in a wheelchair). In the various scenes, you'll note that it never breaks this rule. You'll note that neither Pierre nor Franz walk because they're played by the actor in the wheelchair who also plays Michael. Delena also plays Gina and Senora Chavez. The challenge does not limit the characters. It limits the resources. None of the overlaps appear in any scenes together.


Back to the story, consider the duplicate roles were all whom Chris interacted with. They are all Michael and Delena, even Gina. Why? Because she was already there too. The same person has multiple dialects? Is in more than one place at the same time? Perhaps you saw multiple roles when they're all the same. Why else would you cast that way? The house has absorbed many over the years...and these are their shadows, though as individuals, they no longer exist.

Suspense? Yeah, it could use more. Hotel California? Yeah, that crossed my mind.

EDIT: "A slice rents one of his pants legs revealing a wicked gash in his leg." In short, his pants are ripped and you can see a cut on his leg.


Oh.  I see what you were getting at when I read it again.  Not sure how it would play out on film having the same actors doing multiple roles here.  Pretty clever to keep the descriptions of the characters just ambiguous enough, though.

"A slice rents..."  I kind of figured that's what it meant.  Still reads very awkward to me, though.

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George Willson
Posted: October 19th, 2010, 7:17am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from screenrider
This was different.   Not sure if I liked it or not.  One thing I do know, the foriegn language was a turn off.  Also I wish you'd get different screenwriting software like Celtix or something.  Your font looks like it's ten years old.   I've got Movie Magic, too.  I don't use it anymore since I've switched to Celtix.  Anyway, good effort.   Tragic ending.   I'll be curious to hear your take on it.  The end.  The beginning.  Eternity.   Dangerous road out there.


I find it completely amusing that this is the second time you've fixated on the font. I generally don't use screenwriting software. I do have Final Draft, and sometimes, I'll import the final Word doc into Final Draft if I need to do some reporting or something on it or really want to dig into revisions. But I actually find some of its auto-formatting annoying, so for just writing, I use Word, and the font is Courier New. It's more than ten years old. This time it isn't faded because I used the actual Adobe acrobat program for the conversion instead of a free plugin.

I think the language thing is going to be a matter of preference. I'm fascinated by languages, so the variety in this one would have intrigued me that much more, whether I know what they're saying or not. Remember that if someone throws out a language and no translation is offered, it probably means the actual meaning is less important than the inclusion of something you don't understand. This little bit of linguistics was simply meant to throw you off and make you wonder what was being said. In films where a foreigner is dropped into a land where he doesn't know the language, it isn't subtitled until he understands it to make the situation that much more frightening.

I'm wondering what you mean by my take on it. I don't have any throwaway lines there, so, yes, there is a meaning. "The end" is the end of his natural life. "The beginning" and "eternity" relate together. However, the "dangerous road" works off of "you'll be missed" because they reference how he died in a sort of call back to the car accident.

This is not in any way meant to be an allegory to the afterlife. It's just a ghost story.


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dogglebe
Posted: October 19th, 2010, 10:30am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from George Willson
For the record, before I wrote this, I read the rules carefully. The rules state that there are three actors: one female, two male (one in a wheelchair). In the various scenes, you'll note that it never breaks this rule. You'll note that neither Pierre nor Franz walk because they're played by the actor in the wheelchair who also plays Michael. Delena also plays Gina and Senora Chavez. The challenge does not limit the characters. It limits the resources. None of the overlaps appear in any scenes together.


I think that, when Don said 'two male and one female,' he wasn't talking the minimum number of characters.  He was talking the total.  But enough discussion about semantics.

The script really didn't do anything for me, regardless of the body count.  Your introduction of Franz and Pierre seemed like filler.  You want Chris to think he's not getting out?  Don't show people telling him he's not getting out.  Show trying to get out but failing.  More than once!  When I lock my keys in my car, I check all the doors atleast twice before calling Triple-A.  Chris tries once to get out and surrenders.  And his girlfriend's in the house, too.

What a fucking quitter.

Human nature doesn't want us to quit so easily.  As children, we didn't ask Mommy for a cookie once.  We did it repeatedly.  This follows through to our adult lives.  And Chris wants a really big cookie now.


Phil

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Ryan1  -  October 20th, 2010, 9:55am
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grademan
Posted: October 19th, 2010, 10:49am Report to Moderator
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George,

This one was hard to warm up to.

I wanted to see how Jack & Gina got themselves into the house you can never leave,

Actually, I was expecting an interpretation of Hotel California. Hey, maybe I did get one?!

I didn't like the forgein languages. If it's not important enough to translate, why have it all, capice? NASCAR English only please

I wanted to see the STRUGGLE of them trying to leave

I really liked the visuals of  the corridors at the end

Gary

I think my expectations got in the way of enjoying this story...
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Electric Dreamer
Posted: October 19th, 2010, 3:12pm Report to Moderator
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George,

Good on you for completing the one week challenge!
I have to say my mind went right to the Hotel California song too.
That being said, I marvel at the technical fluidity of your script writing.
All the languages tripped me up a bit, but I figured the words weren't critical.
I get the trapped echoes idea, a nifty theory that sounds better to me than it reads.
There are seemingly so many characters that its hard for me to get invested in anyone.
I felt the repetition kept me at arm's length from your story.
However, I felt you were visually on the mark and I was never lost by your narrative.
Thanks for the post! I look forward to reading more of your material.

Regards,
E.D.


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Dreamscale
Posted: October 19th, 2010, 3:43pm Report to Moderator
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George, George, George...congrats on completing a script for the OWC.

Damn, I don't even know what to say here.  Believe it or not, I actually read every single post on every single thread, so I am aware of what you've said here and I will follow along until the thread is dead.

The way Don stated the challenge requirements was a problem from the moment it was posted.  I knew it was and I tried to get clarification, but he wouldn't give it.  This is most likely why such a simple thing became such a clusterfuck.

I understand how you and/or anyone else could contend that you have 3 actors playing as many different roles as you want, but in all reality, it's a little foolish and would look quite hilarious onscreen.  To take that a step further, it just doesn't make sense why anyone wold really want to do that in the first place.  If for some odd reason, you literally only have 3 actors, then by all means, shoot a script that has 3 characters.  Non human characters should have been clearly allowed, as Don said himself that CGI work was fine, meaning, make whatever non human character you want.

Oh damn it...I digress...

Sorry to say, but this doesn't work on any level for me.  It seems like you purposely wrote a script that you knew people would have trouble with, and I don't understand the reasoning behind such a thing.  Pissers are different.  Pissers are meant to entertain through their absurdity.  I just can't see how anyone is going to follow this, buy into it, or like it.

How many characters are even here..like 5 or 6?  Why would you do that?  Were you trying to stretch the limitations as far as you possibly could?  I don't get it.

OK, a few things...

No FADE IN.  You start with a BLACK SCREEN and never leave it, so that's a huge problem, obviously.

You omitted several Slugs when 1 of the characters left the initial scene and went upstairs.  Even your opening Slug isn't right, as you simply have "HOUSE", with no specific room.  Later, you detail exactly which room we're in, meaning, the initial Slug is incorrect.

None of your characters are developed at all, as far as I can see.  Speaking in a foreign language doesn't develop anyone cause we don't even know what they're saying,and you even said yourself that it doesn't matter what they're saying.  So, if it doesn't matter what they're saying, why even have dialogue included?

You had an additional 2 pages you could have used, but chose not to for some reason.  The story here is incomplete.  Not only should you have used the 2 extra pages, but you should have used your first 8 much more wisely.  You've got basically an entire page about the dude's injured leg being wrapped up.  Who cares?  Nothing to do with whatever the story is.

A number of typos, a number of orphans (and near orphans), lots and lots of meaningless dialogue, and basically no story and no resolution.

I'm sorry, but IMO, this is a mess and an irritating read.
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