Harsh Shadow by David Modell - Short - A mysterious shadow remains after a detective finds and kills a serial murderer. 7 pages - pdf, format

Hey Dave.  I have a shadow-horror script myself, oddly enough, so I decided to give yours a look.

Decent logline.  I might lose the "finds and".

Not sure what software you are using, if any, but you can lose the continueds.  Those are just clutter at the top and bottom of your pages.

Your use of parentheticals is a bit too liberal for me.  Particularly when you use (to himself).  I would just lose that dialogue altogether, actually.  And he keeps talking to himself, and in many cases, it is not necessary.  I would recommend taking an objective standpoint and consider losing most of those self-talking moments.  And most of the parentheticals, as well.

And you have a weird slug on page 2, where you place a new slug even though we haven't changed scenes.  We are still in the farmhouse.  Is this supposed to be sometime later?  Try using "LATER", which is fine.

I had a difficult time following the action once Ash shows up -- where the knife is hovering over Lambent, then it slams into Ash, then Lambent is shooting the wall.  I was under the impression that Lambent had been knocked out by the earlier blow.  You should clarify that -- if he is or isn't.

I have also decided that Lambent should not call Ash at all.  Since Ash is really the only other guy we need, things would proceed much smoother if Ash were already there -- outside or in another room. I would also make this change for the sake of clarity.  I think it would help.

And I would say your final scene with the cops and Sgt. Dredge brings nothing new to the table for this story.  I would lose that scene, too, were this mine.

So, after harping on all the negatives, I did mostly like the story and concept.  Enough to look over a rewrite if you do one.  Let me know.

What I would change -- again, just my opinion -- is I would involve Ash a bit more in the early story, and leave your script at just those three characters, losing all the cops and stuff later.  Think about it.  Do you really need them?

This should end with Lambent and the fire.  That is enough.  And I would kill Ash.  But that is just me.

Hope some of these thoughts help you out.    

thanks for the read and advice, I great appreciate the criticism.

On a few things that you suggested, like the slugline that didn't make sense. My script teacher and the two books that I read say you don't need the later because a new slugline implies scene change or time passing, the the later is not needed.

I do like your ideas on some of my concept issues and the parentheticals, so those will be taken into some of the changes I need to do.

Yeah, I hate the stupid continues on the tops, celtix puts them in when you transfer into a PDF.

Thanx again bert.

David,
I'll give this a quick read as well but I did want to chime in on the celtix option to use the CONTINUE on the page or not. You can go in and change that to have it not show those on the page.

Shawn.....><

David,
First off welcome to SS. Bert covered the story aspect in many ways. I want to cover a couple of the formatting thing I caught right away that may be of some help to you.

One thing that is typically stayed away from is “ING’s” known also as passive verbiage.

An example from page 1:

Dark and quiet, light coming from a flickering porch light.
Trees and leaves move with the wind and the screen door is
knocking against the front door.

Also, the “AND” word is used here a lot. It’s frowned on a bit as well.


The same tends to hold true for the “IS” word. Again, it comes off passive.

This whole sentence can read much cleaner if just those few principle were to be applied.

Rewritten:

A dark, quiet, night. Light flickers from a porch light.
With the wind, trees, leaves move as the screen door knocks against the front door.

See how it reads more in real time? You can see how this can apply to many of your action blocks to help tighten up your script.

Hope this helps.

Shawn…..><

Hey David,

I liked the concept but execution was not done properly. I have experience in this.

You tell too much in a short number of pages. You've got to give some breadth for the reader to take things in. For example, before the shadow appears, why not build the tension by having Lambent search the place, have him read the book that discusses how to reincarnate oneself, and then, introduce us to the witch's shadow. This was one example that caught my eye.

What I think Bert is talking about is on pg. 2 where you have INT. FARM HOUSE - NIGHT. Why write this since everything was happening in the area?

You gotta also work on keeping white space on the page. The more space the better.

I also agree with Bert to limit the number of characters. I will say even 2 lambent and the shadow. The story could end when Lambent exits the burning house.

Hope this helps
Gabe

Quoted from Dave My script teacher and the two books that I read say you don't need the later because a new slugline implies scene change or time passing, the the later is not needed.

Not to disrespect your teacher or anything -- I am just a guy on a chat board -- but I think you might be "misinterpreting" what you have learned.  A new slug in and of itself does not imply time passing, particularly if the scene is identical.

I assure you it is confusing to a seasoned reader.

I'll bet if you showed this exact example to your teacher, they would confirm you are not doing it quite right.  Not to harp or anything -- but you admit being kind of new to this, and better to get the little things (and the easiest things) right at this early stage.

David,

I had very much the same thoughts as Bert. Some of the action needs to be clearer. I had to piece together what was going on when Ash first arrived.

I think you need to do more to establish the witch character. All witches aren’t evil. And calling her the Wicked Witch? It kind of makes it sound like your knowledge of their religion is based entirely on The Wizard of Oz.

Lambent talking to himself comes off as silly when he’s just stating the obvious.

You’ve got a lot of characters for a short and some of them are effectively wasted. The villain is killed immediately. Ash is killed immediately. There are eight police officers. They really don’t add a lot to the equation.

This would be a very expensive short to produce. You’ve got a lot of police officers and you burn down a house. You’ll have a much better chance of getting your work produced if you tone it down a little. And this story really does allow for it.

Personally, I think it would be better to back the story up and show more of Sable and Lambent prior to Sable being killed. Ash should already be there somewhere and be Lambent’s partner or something.

You really don’t have a setup. I would focus more on building up to the point where you begin and then on the tension from there to the resolution.

Maybe instead of burning the house down, you can figure out a way for the burning body to be outside. Or at least in a small shack or something so that a filmmaker might be able to find something he or she can actually burn down.

Good luck with it.


Breanne

This is a nice idea and could be very visual. It is let down by confusing descriptions and extremely on the nose dialogue. The ending also falls flat - perhaps her shadow could be seen twisting up out of the smoke as they drive away.

Here some notes on tightening up your style:

Try and trim your description passages for example your opening paragraph could read:

'Dark and quiet. A porch light flickers. Trees rustle. A screen door knocks in the wind.'

Says the same thing but in only one line.

Having said that your first two descriptive words are dark & quiet and yet you have a light flickering, windy trees and a knocking door. Picky I know but it jumped out at me.

You repeat yourself with your slugline _INT. FARMHOUSE and then tell us again we're inside a house.

typo: lay/lays/lies

How do we know she is also known as The Wicked Witch? Is there a title card telling us? Show don't tell.

Lambent's dialogue about the shadow is very on the nose, would a guy really say that to himself? A simple 'huh?' would tell us the same thing. His talk in unnatural throughout.

You have an unecessary slug after Lambent is knocked out.

Need to CAP John Ash.

'Lambent is still pointing his gun' - huh? what just happened I thought he was on the floor?

typo: directions/direction

David,

Congrats on completing a short, feels good to get one under the belt, I'm sure.
And yay for more Californians!

I like your concept, but I found it hard to follow.
This idea would be tough to pull out even for a veteran writer.
The action choreography would take a lot of work and chew up white space.

As with all of us when starting out, your writing is very novel like, an example:
p. 3 Lambent shows confidence, waiting for his moment.

That could easily be rewritten as:
Lambent grits his teeth. He wipes sweat off his brow as he reloads.

His action there shows the audience instead of just telegraphing to the reader.
As a reader, I'm much more engaged when shown things and can judge for myself.

I agree it would be more efficient if Ash was already there.
Makes sense that detectives travel in pairs, especially on a dangerous case.

Onto the infamous page two slug.
Here's what I think, for argument's sake, let's say your teacher is correct.
And let's also say everyone here is a potential buyer/producer for your property.
The lion's share of us stumbled and stopped on that slug.
You lost our attention, we had to regroup and try to approach your story again.
An industry professional would trash bin your script right there most likely.
So, even if its technically correct, it's an obstacle to getting read by others.
Anything that disrupts the flow of the page and confuses readers has got to go.
We're all guilty of doing this, that's why we all rewrite our brains out.

I look forward to seeing where you take this.
Thanks for posting and keep writing, California!

Regards,
E.D.

Lambert needs to stay on the line while he describes the situation.  When he talks to himself, it does come off as being silly.  Maybe while he talks, the Shadow behind him comes to life.  You can build up some tension there.

Pretty wordy and confusing because of it, but I could follow. Interesting stuff.

Dark and quiet, light coming from a flickering porch light.
Trees and leaves move with the wind and the screen door is
knocking against the front door.

Not really quiet with the wind knocking the screen door against the house.

Hi David,

I enjoyed reading your script. I think the premise was interesting and frightening.. There's a fair amount of action scenes which I think were well described and made it easy to visualize. I think the dialogue was pretty believable too.

I would agree with someone else who said there is too much going on in just these few pages. I think spanning the story out over more pages and breaking up the action would allow it to flow smoother.

This is my first post on the forum, and it's 3:30 in the morning over here, so please take my criticism very lightly.

Cheers.

hay ,

Good idea but not executed quite well ..

I think you have exposed too much in the dialogs

LAMBENT
(to himself)
How is this shadow still here? It
should be down there with her. This
doesn’t make any sense.

This is not a natural human behavior or is it .. If you see a shadow on the wall and the body of the shadow lying on the floor.. you wont say a word .. you would look at it in a strange way .. thats it

By exposing too much in the dialogs you are not giving respect to the viewer ..