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This was more of a thriller with a hint of witchcraft thrown in.
::SPOILERS:: The characters weren't developed as well as they needed to be in order for me to believe that these Wiccans needed to be slaughtered because of a missing child. ::END::
There seems to be a back story to it all but it just wasn't established.
The writing is good for the most part but there are places where this could have been tightened up, freeing pages for more of the story.
This didn't feel like a horror. I liked Jamilla and think the story would benefit with a bit more from her and what the Wicca's intentions were. IMO there was too much focus on Miles wanting his form of justice.
I was confused on the words you capitalized. Why?
Also, there were camera directions in a few spots that could have easily been described in the narrative. Camera direction or even things like POV, take the reader out of the story.
Great job completing something for this challenge. It had my interest but maybe just needs some focus on characters other than Miles.
I can see what you're going for with the logline but it doesn't make much sense.
Starting with a camera angle is one definite way not to get reads. It just doesn't leave a good impression so we're already going into the script with some bias. They read amateur.
"By a truck, its bonnet open, is MILES GRANT, (34)." I don't think a sentence can get more awkward than this. Try and read this one aloud, it doesn't make much sense does it? And it takes a moment for you to understand it.
A few mistakes littered throughout the first 3 pages.
who's is whose.
The mistakes keep coming and coming, could've used a good edit.
Maybe I missed something but how are Pam and Miles related?
Mark needs to be capped.
Confusing to say the least. Didn't understand much, but from what I understood, I quite liked this actually. Nice pacing, nice structure, memorable characters. There was a lot to be liked here, I just wish it wasn't so convoluted. Characters seem to pop up out of no where, which was probably why I didn't know what was going on. It was a nice script though, just needed a few more edits.
Nooooo a 'close on' , this immediate says to me novice, which is probably grossly unfair, but it does. Come on let's see the rest The pause in dialogue. Let me tell you what I know. If you want a pause, but the sentence carries on then ...connected to the words. If you want them to trial off, then ... At the end not connected. Is the colour of her jacket top going to meaningful? With shorts I try and not to use surnames unless they add. Why not just Duke, for example.
But...after one page I'm also thinking, strong writer.
He's strokes a pink rabbit - very James Bond P5 Question mark after ..guns before
Later on I'm still thinking strong writer P7 you gota stop this...bit late isn't it? I can understand revenge but not on this scale...it feels over the top
And a double twist at the end ...they find the child, when we expected otherwise, jamila steals Pam and miles suddenly decides to blast Pam, as he sees her, because she removes her hand of his arm. Humm...this last part could take some believing, but if handled right could work.
Finished
Ok, not a novice writer, I just didn't like the close up to start with.
Ok, lots to like but I just wasn't sold on the mass killing, I couldn't buy that. It could have been handled more subtly. Yet, the rest was sound, liked it. Tidy job.
The Elevator Most Belonging To Alice - Semi Final Bluecat, Runner Up Nashville Inner Journey - Page Awards Finalist - Bluecat semi final Grieving Spell - winner - London Film Awards. Third - Honolulu Ultimate Weapon - Fresh Voices - second place IMDb link... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm7062725/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
I don't mind a horror short leaning towards a thriller angle. Sometimes the two go hand in hand like bread and butter. But man, I lost count of the spelling errors. I was also thrown several times when, in dialog I read "The Wicca does this" or "The Wicca does that" - it just doesn't sound right.
Good idea. Good story overall...but the execution isn't up to par. BUT I think it's worth saving in a revison or two. Could be something if you want it to be.
I was a bit lost while reading this. Some of it's crystal but there's a lot of it too vague. As said there's quite of few typos, which never helps. It seems a strange mix as some of it is pretty good but too much seems rushed.
I thought this was a pretty poor effort. The concept... A okay. I don't think if fits the horror genre but it's still a viable starting point. The execution doesn't work though.
The writing is sloppy. The scenes are basically farted out and done with, without really accomplishing all that much. Many of them are only three lines long. The action and dialogue is redundant and awkward with phrases like "Laughs an incredulous laugh" and "A HAND grabs Pam's hand." There's many typos and abundance of dashes where there shouldn't be any. The words shotgun, farmhand, and fireplace among others are flat out written incorrectly.
Some of the character names make Fat Farm-Hand and Bearded Farm-Hand make some of the action read even more awkward than it already is when you don't precede them with a "the." And those stupid dashes, man. They gotta go. I think it'd be fair to mention it twice. Not only do they misspell words but they have a weird effect where it seems like the sentences and paragraphs are broken up some how. No good.
The dialogue is piss poor. I can't believe how many times the word "bitch" is spewed out by grown ass men in their 30s. Unless you're Jesse Pinkman, it just comes off as cheap, adolescent, and unrealistic. Some of the lines are just awkward in their own right though. "Still got a bitch each." "I so love that." Who says this shit? Seriously? Even if it's not supposed to be realistic and is something for the audience's sake, it's still cheap and juvenile.
Duke's dialogue is seriously redundant and cliche but in a really clumsy sort of way. Again, who actually says "Taking justice into your own hands?" It's like he knows he's in a movie. The officer's dialogue is ridiculous. I mean, is this guy seriously going to shrug off the potential murder of children, Wiccan or not? It's just not going to happen.
Think this might be a mess. Perhaps not a huge mess but a mess just the same. Again, the concept is totally viable. But you need to fix a lot. I'd start with this dash obsession and the frequency and fashion by which grown men throw the B-word around.
I think you lost focus here or you just decided to go out, and pardon the pun, all guns blazing.
Nothing really makes sense – for starters, get rid of the sheriff and his deputy because they play no part whatsoever unless they were supposed to and you ran out of pages to fit them in at the end.
Miles is angry, and decides to get to together a bunch of farmers to kill, or should I say massacre a Wicca group because they (and I’m guessing here because it isn’t made clear) kidnapped Duke’s daughter.
Duke, whose actual daughter’s missing, doesn’t agree with Miles but still goes along for the ride while Pam…
I’m just gonna stop here – the problem is that I have no idea who any of these characters are? Who is Pam? Why does she care what is going on? Why does Miles want to kill this Wicca group – does he have some past history with them?
There is a lot of jumping to different scenes, but nothing is ever truly revealed about story or character. The final four pages is just a mess with loads of new characters being intro’d to either shoot a witches head off or get killed.
I did like how Jamilla transforms her body and was expecting some twist but then she gets her head shot off as well.
The writing does need some attention I'm afraid. There were lots of issues popping up.
This story needs a protag – amazing right! Think about whose story this is (Miles, Duke, Pam, Jamilla) and then try to focus the story around that person. I think it should be Duke as it’s his daughter that is missing but I’m sure there is plenty of ways for this story to go.
A key aspect of screenplays is world building. You have to create or portray a world that the audience believes in and is intrigued by. This does not just apply to sci fi or fantasy, but to every movie. Put us in a world we believe in and one we are interested to explore.
A common problem with the OWC's is that the worlds we find ourselves in might be interesting to a degree, but they are difficult to buy into. That is the case here.
I had trouble believing in this world where a tribe of Wiccans lives in the forest stealing local children, and though the town strongly suspects this, the police take no action. The farmers take things into their own hands in a poorly planned massacre of the Wiccans...one where the farmers strangely don't seem to care about looking for or rescuing the stolen children!
And when the local cop is warned the farmers are on their way to massacre the people, he says in effect they have to wait for a crime to be committed before responding.
Another common thread with the OWCs is that there is no character we want to follow on this journey, or where we care what happens to.
It's not a bad effort, most or all of the OWc's suffer from these problems. It reads fine enough and the dialogue reveals plenty of potential talent in the writer.
And I feel the pain of the writer, I might add. Had this story been more realistic, where the farmer, instead of the massacre, took a Wiccan and tortured him for information, people would have complained if wasn't horror. It seems like many writers feel a need to thrown in all kinds of over the top mayhem and graphic stuff in order to qualify it as horror. And they are justified in thinking so, because based on comments, this seems to be the general perception here of what horror needs to be. Throw in severed limbs and exploding heads and as long as your slugs are formatted properly no one will complain. No one will film that stuff though.
No comments read before. Non-native speaker – take it or leave it.
Wicca
Hello.
Don't know about the rating. Here, it is not the highest??? It's a pure massacre. With holes in bodies and all that…
Wicca has got two acts. Prepare a massacre. Do a massacre.
Does the author want to say to me that there's a point in life, when violent is justified? Not creative. That's a question we grow up with. It surrounds us. Almost everybody had to decide before in a special moment to be violent or not. From the point we join kindergarten.
I mean everybody has got still a standpoint on that. Does he want to change that standpoint. Some intentions seem not clear in that case. I had the impression because the story was so flat. "Yeah. We will kill them". Impressions are real. Ah. It's just difficult to talk about that script. It costs me the most time to comment this until now.
If the writer wants to show gore, than why no motives, visible goals (the children)? Many characters talk about rescue children, rescue children… Where are these children? What does the wicca do to them.
Interesting story you got here. Not badly written, and entertaining enough to make me want to keep turning pages. However, the ending left me confused. Did Miles know that it wasnt really Pam at the end? Seems like he did. But that's just the point. I'm not sure. For me, the essence of the story was lost in too much exposition and too many characters. By the time I got to the end I wasn't sure really of what was going on, or why a sherrif would just ignore Pam like that. For the sake of the story, of course. But it just doesn't sit well with me.
Anyway, congrats on getting this done for the challenge!
I'm going to have to disagree with the majority here (except for the spelling). I liked this little tale and in 'movie world' I believe this could work. Not that original - but has many things that have worked in film over and over.
Good effort for 10 pages. I think you have a lot of information crammed in and IMO it worked just fine.
The only thing that did annoy me was the ending - I was just as confused by it as others and didn't really get a sense of satisfaction from it either. To be honest - I didn't like Miles and the fact that he had just murdered all these people without a care - I kind of would have liked to see Jamilla grab the gun and kill Miles.
Loved the part where Jamilla consumes Pam and becomes her - but that's just my kind of weird twisted thing - loved it.
Tone was dark and brooding and I wanted to like this more. Writing’s lean and flows well. Seems like the writer knows their stuff and has a flair for creating tension with little dialogue.
In the end it was hard to know where anyone was coming from. Pam felt instrumental to this, yet I’ve no idea how she was connected to both groups and with whom her loyalties lay.
Without an understanding of the Wicca’s supposed crimes and intentions it was hard to know whether Miles and co. were in some way justified for their actions. In the end I felt shut out of the wider picture, leaving too little to connect with the characters and their choices.
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