Stage Four by James Fisher (JamesTheJudged) - Short, Drama - A grieving husband thinks back to when he first met his wife after she is diagnosed with stage four cancer. 6 pages - pdf, format

Hi James,

I can definitely see the potential in this one. I'm sure a film student will be inclined to film this as a quick and easy shoot. The story is reasonably familiar to most people and I'm not seeing many sparks of originality, but for the most part this one does the trick.

You've still got some issues with writing that could be resolved, though. They're simple things that you can clean up in five minutes, so don't stress too much.

Remember to introduce those characters in CAPS.

Page 1: "The two are holding each others hands." - Could easily just be "They hold hands." - Keep it as short as possible.

More descriptions on characters are needed at the start. I'm afraid simply giving ages doesn't allow much for visual interpretation.

Get rid of the transitions. That's for the director to decide. Your job is to write the screenplay. Same deal with the CONTINUED's

I'm not a big fan of the Voiceovers to be honest. Look, I think it's a great technique to use, within reason. When your story isn't reliant on voiceovers then it's a great technique and I approve 100%. The problem here is, you're too reliant on the voiceover. Your visuals aren't enough to tell the story, so you've added a character narrating to "fill in the gaps" which isn't good. You need to at least find a balance between the narration and visuals, otherwise you may as well have a black screen instead. Don't rely on it too much. Maybe scrap the voiceover completely and make it a silent film and tell the story with visuals, or make it slightly longer and tell the story with dialogue. At the moment, the voiceover kills it.

Hope this helps.

Dan

James, I'll try not repeat what Dan said - he summed a lot of things up that I noticed as well - don't want to sound like a broken record!

You do need a FADE IN btw.

As for the Voiceover device - well I'm actually a fan, but more of topping and tailing and lil in the middle, than the entire script. And, you've got to really craft your words carefully & pay specific attention to your 'tenses'.

If your character is reflecting on the past, for example, then he'll speak of it as being in the past i.e., 'we had the time of our lives' - likewise if you're character speaks present day it needs to sound as if it's happening right now - present tense, for example 'the Doctor says she has cancer' or if reflecting: 'this was the day we were given the bad news'. At the moment you seem to be mixing in a bit of both & and it's just a bit messy.

Yes, this is a familiar tale, but despite some problems you managed to convey quite a bit of sentiment for a short piece, so well done on that.

James,

You need to get rid of the SUPERS.  For the premise and the length of the script, they look better on paper than they would on film.  

Page 1, Snappy dialogue at the end, but their jobs should be further away from each other. Or maybe Robert can be sarcastic and lie about what he does in comparison to Angie.

Page 2,

ROBERT (V.O.)
(laughs)
We have a good night.

Robert laughs should have it's own line of action unless he is laughing as he's speaking, but that takes away from pacing.  Also, change have to had.  I'm actually noticing a lot of past/present flip flopping in your dialogue.

Page 3,

ROBERT (V.O.)
We started chemotherapy hoping it
could possibly save her.

I don't know, sounds kinda duh.  I would focus more on the second part when Robert looked into her eyes and could see that it wasn't her, that is good storytelling that deserves more exploration.

Page 4,

Good that you have conflict here, but I want to know why.  I thought it would be better actually for Robert to make the choice to leave rather than Angie.  Angie makes the decision to leave, so Robert has to live with a choice she made?  No way, Robert should have left so he lives with the choice HE made.  

Your work spent so much time on the beach I thought the story would move back there at the end, but it didn't.  Good job, I think you should give yourself some more pages to focus on a few key areas where the story needs it.

Johnny

@danbotha: Thanks for letting me know about the transitions and character descriptions. I wasn't sure if they were really needed or not. This script was a way of experimenting with Voiceover. It was a way to try and tell a story with only Voiceover. I can find a way to balance the two, like you recommended, in adding more to what we see.

@LC: Fade In... oops. And what do you mean with "more of topping and tailing and lil in the middle?" Do you mean less Voiceover? I'm not sure

@oJOHNNYoNUTSo: I agree on the SUPERS. After going back to the script I noticed it gets really out of hand. I'll have to depend on the director to physically show a passage of time than just dates. Interesting suggestion about their jobs. The "hoping we could save her" line definitely needs to go. The wasn't her thing must have slipped my mind. I tried to play that within her behavior afterwards but I guess that didn't work. The other Robert ending does sound a lot better, especially with the beach! Hope you haven't copyrighted that  

Now to address the whole thing of flip flop dialogue, past to present tense, I imagined this playing out like an interview. Robert gets caught up in the emotion of what he's saying that he can't help but imagine that the past is now the present. That is why he laughs when he's speaking in one scene.
Now this didn't really workout well since no one who's read it got it and honestly, how could anyone? I can maybe add a scene at the end where it's revealed he's being interviewed for whatever purpose. Then afterward he goes to the beach and then we FADE OUT.
That or I can just change the tenses. What do you guys think? After typing it, I do quite like the interview ending but I want to know.

Hey James.

Not too sure how I felt about this one.  It seemed like kind of a story that you just chose to highlight rather than tell the story of.

I'm a big fan of voiceovers, but for us to actually feel the power of what's going on, we need to see the characters fall for each other, not just have the narrator say they did.  We have to watch them discover that she has cancer, we have to see the pain, not be told by the narrator.  Bring us to the scene where she decides to end it.  Don't have the narrator just tell us what happens.

Just telling us, or highlighting things, we won't get the emotional connection we're supposed to.  We have to see the characters live their life, otherwise, this might as well just be a short prose story.

I'm going to disagree with Dan and say that this one is actually going to be very difficult to shoot.  Sure, the story's wholly told by the narrator, which normally would make it easy to shoot, but there's still a beach scene, a hotel scene, a wedding scene complete with priest and family, a doctor's office scene, and then the house that they live in.  5 locations = a lot of pre-production and a wedding scene always means decorating and extras.  Those aren't easy for student or regular independent directors to come by.

But Dan's pretty spot on about everything else he said.

You have a good initial idea, but you have to get into their lives and show us the character's emotions, don't just talk about it and brush over it.

Hope this helps some.

- Mark