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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Horror Scripts  ›  The Yowie Moderators: bert
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  Author    The Yowie  (currently 13440 views)
Don
Posted: April 24th, 2014, 5:24pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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The Yowie by Michael Brown (trickyb) - Horror, Comedy - A group of tourists must fight for their lives when they are used as bait to lure in the mythical Australian bigfoot, the Yowie. 108 pages - pdf, format


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trickyb
Posted: April 24th, 2014, 5:48pm Report to Moderator
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Thanks Don, this is my attempt at a good ole fashioned over the top creature feature, hope you enjoy the read and any comments are welcomed and appreciated.


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Maarow
Posted: April 30th, 2014, 11:11am Report to Moderator
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Hi! This is the first script I've started reading since I've joined!

Word of warning, I tend to be pretty nitpicky as an editor, but I'll try not to be too annoying.

page 1 - Your actions/descriptions are a tad vague. How do we know that the "nocturnal wildlife is vibrant and alive"--do we hear sounds, see animals moving about, what?

Also, maybe I'm too detail-oriented, but I'd like to know what you mean when you say the sound "grabs the attention" of Phil and Zoe. This is our introduction to the characters, so it would set up a great deal about the tone of the movie if we had some hint as to what they were doing in their tent before they hear the sound--sleeping and snoring loudly, having sex, arguing? Doesn't need a whole scene, but maybe a quick line of description or dialogue to establish how we ought to feel about them.

Why does Phil get mad at/ignore Zoe when she's actively looking for the thing he most wants her to get (the video camera)? I would suggest either changing what Zoe is looking for (bra, sock, some trifle) or imply that Phil is getting frustrated because he doesn't remember where he put the camera and he's taking it out on Zoe. Example, Zoe: "Where's the camera?" Phil: It's in the...(thinking, can't remember) You know where the camera is, don't ask me stupid questions!" I'm not saying I'm writing great dialog here, just trying to get across what I mean.

page 2 - If you're not making "the ground shakes with every step" a new sentence, change "shakes" to "shaking".

And again, specificity: how is the howling wind "strange"? I'm guessing, given the context, it's strange in that it sounds like a howling monster. But the reader shouldn't have to guess.

Check your run on sentences. "The music gets louder and louder" is a complete sentence on its own, but as a clause it should read, "the wind getting louder and louder".

There is obviously time between Phil saying "Over there" and "We'll film from..." so you don't need a parenthetical "CONT'D". Only use that if the same character is talking without interruption.

"Shush," not "sush".

page 3 - I like the building of intensity leading to the attack. The exponential progression of the ceremony in proportion to the impending moment of the kill is well handled and, even though a lot is going on at once, I can visualize it cleanly. Very nice job.

I will say, though, that nothing in Phil or Zoe's behavior reflects your opening description of them as "snobs". Ignorant and foolish, perhaps; condescending and opportunistic, sure. But not really snobbish.

We don't need to know this is a domestic flight from Sydney to Darwin, and if we do there needs to be some visual way to explain it--if it's important, have the captain announce it or use a title card. If not, discard this description and just tell us it's a stuffy, packed flight.

I don't know if this is maybe a regional thing (?) but so far as I know, "c'mon" is how "come on" is traditionally shortened.

page 4 - "Seated behind where they sat separated by a big fat guy is WESLEY, short black hair, athletic, wears ear phones attached to his phone and CINDY, blonde hair, girl next door type." I'm not sure what the geography is that you're laying out here--these two characters are seated behind Tyson and Amy? If so, say that Tyson and Amy are separated by a fat guy earlier, when they are introduced.

Also, unless it's a plot point I wouldn't really specify hair color or style. If a character is a Goth or a Valley Girl or a monk their hair type might tell you about their personality, but for an average guy with average hair I don't really need to know that it's short and black.

"The sadness written all over his face tells that there is something not quite right between the two of them." One thing I struggle with in writing screenplays is how to relay information visually, to convey the relationship or silent interaction of two characters without words. There's probably a stronger way to suggest that these two are feeling distant than just relying on one character's face. Maybe he starts to reach over to grab her hand, then hesitates; or maybe he starts talking while looking out the window, then turns to see that she is wearing headphones (instead of him) and hasn't heard a word he said. Or the headphones could be hidden by her hair and she, sensing he is awaiting a response, removies them and says, irritably, "What?" And he shrinks away and says, "Nothing." Just brainstorming here.

And again, instead of just relying on a "look of hate" to imply something about Cindy's relationship with Nick (I assume that's why Wesley looks at Nick hatefully), integrate it into the action. Maybe Cindy treats Nick with more patience than Wesley, or she's listening to music that Nick gave her, and Wesley mentions that he gave her an album to listen to a year ago and she never got around to it.

Say who "the gang" is at the start of the flashback, just for the sake of clarity.

The flashback clarifies the relationships a bit, but the character of Benny confuses me. It was established that Wesley has a problem with Nick, yet Benny is the one who upsets him in the flashback. Also, Nick is described as being a nerd, but Benny is the one who seems to lack social graces. I'm already wondering if we need this many characters? Benny so far seems like a sixth wheel (if that's a thing).

page 7 Why does Wesley rip out his headphones? He was already privy to the information in the flashback, it's not like he was surprised (again) by the way things turned out.

And this is where I paused. I'll come back to it later. Cheers!
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trickyb
Posted: April 30th, 2014, 5:59pm Report to Moderator
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Hey Maarow, thanks for taking a look, you have brought up some good points which I can change so cheers, A note on Benny, it's his mission in life to annoy everyone and anyone and a little later on explains why he's with the group.

in regards to Phil, the guy is a douche, all he cares about is himself and his travel story and not his and Zoe's.  In terms of them being snobs I think I've left it more for the actors to portray in the way they conduct themselves rather than flat out explain it through dialogue etc.

I'll super the Sydney to Darwin flight or have the hostess mention that she hates having to stop over in Darwin.  Either way it's a good point.

Wesley's reaction is one of frustration and the audience needs to see it.  You can theorize about any movie and say characters should not get worked up about past events because they have already lived it, but if you did that it would give no reason for conflict and you would need a hell of a lot of flashbacks while you attempt to portray the anger as a result of the situation to bring you all the way to the present day.

In terms of descriptions I do at times tend to leave it to the readers imagination.  When is enough?  Not enough etc is something I'm still developing along with my style.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the story,

Cheers

Michael






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trickyb  -  April 30th, 2014, 7:28pm
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Maarow
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Honestly, after seeing a flashback in which Wesley's proposal is spurned in front of all of his friends, I think the audience can infer that he's feeling frustrated without the dramatic headphone throw. People understand that flashbacks are there for a reason--just cutting to Wesley staring out the window, or maybe doing something a bit more subtle like grinding his teeth or balling his fists, gets the point across.

By page 24 I'm thinking the gang is remarkably casual about being held hostage in the middle of nowhere by two insane natives. If somebody was pointing a gun at you and telling you you can't leave until you buy something, I don't think you'd be rolling your eyes and cracking jokes.

Also, it's unclear why Benny is still tagging along with the group--nobody seems to like him. I was thinking maybe Benny and Wesley have some sort of alliance, since Benny likes to pick on Nick and Wesley clearly has a problem with same. But it's not really made clear. If every single person in the group thinks he's annoying, why not kick him to the curb?

page 38 - pretty gruesome, lol.
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Heretic
Posted: May 2nd, 2014, 12:41pm Report to Moderator
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None of these people are very fun to be around -- maybe a tad bit too unlikeable.

As Maarow notes above, their reactions to being held at gunpoint do not particularly ring true.

The very public airing of Wesley and Cindy's problems does not really works for me. I don't know if it's unbelievable but it's definitely annoying.

Cindy throwing the rock and breaking the glasses is a little bit too incredible to be funny, for me.

The racist dog names are pretty hilarious.

The pull from the Yowie's eye to the testicle will be perfect. Hey how much of the Yowie are we seeing, here? Might be good to make that clear. Is this a reveal?

Nice. Shazza is a breath of much-needed fresh air here. Someone who's not gonna put up with the group's shit. I hope she stays this cool as long as she survives. On 43, her triumph over Benny might be even better if she just never even bothered to look -- "What's the point?" -- a flawless victory.

"Shut up Wesley." Where's Picard when you need him? I was hoping we'd be avoiding the ol' savage Aboriginal ritual gag as a major plot point, but we'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now…

Thoughts on the death of Jones. If you're gonna have an ancillary character killed this late into the plot, I think they should have a more direct link to the main characters. I'm not sure how you would do that as it's set up here -- I guess what I mean is that it's a little bit late to just have, sorta, kills for kills' sake, and that's what this is. If Jones is going to die here, he should be about to majorly affect the antagonist's plans. So a simple fix might be that he sees the murder remains and is about to call in the cavalry -- I think an even better fix would be if this happened earlier and our protagonists were about to be menaced by the Yowie, but Jones distracted it and it had to go get him instead. More direct integration with our main plot.

I had a feeling that the benefit of the doubt would be deserved. The dialogue between all of them hanging in their various jeopardies is one of the high points of the script so far, although it could use a once-over for rhythm -- there's probably more comedy to be mined if you work on the structure of that sequence. Anyway, I'm glad that the Aboriginals are, er, as they are.

I can buy Nick filming the strippers, but approaching the girl at the table and filming the whole conversation is ludicrous. If nothing else, Becky would tell him to fuck off.

On 69, huh? If Benny knew all about the Wesley thing, why didn't he bring it up earlier? I do like the way, though, that this one little lie is setting them all up to die.

On 72, putting the flashback here, when there's immediate danger, doesn't work. The implication of the flashback is that Shazza is telling the entire story, and now is obviously not the time.

Don't like Wesley running off with the spear. If he really loves Cindy, he should be staying with her.

I'm not totally clear on why Shazza needed to pull a gun and reveal her plan at this particular time. Also, it makes no sense for Yulman to tell Nick and Cindy to just run off into the woods if it's his intent to protect them.

If the Yowie so freely and easily murders and eats the Aboriginals, how did any of them survive to the start of this movie? Seems like it woulda killed them all ages ago. On a related note, didn't Yulman say something about the Yowie eating and then going to sleep? How much does it need to eat? It's not THAT big…I guess what I'm wondering about here is motivation. If it's killing to eat, it should have eaten its fill by now. If it's killing for another reason, that should be made explicit. It sits and eats all of Nick, for instance, but kills a couple of the Aboriginals just kinda incidentally and doesn't eat them. What's it doing?

On 86, Wesley can't stop to mess around with the phone when Cindy's just run off into the darkness. Need to find a better way to work in this reveal. Also, it's unnecessary, because Nick's gonna reveal anything in the next scene anyway.

Like Shazza says, people REALLY need to stop running off alone.

Why would a hair-pulling, face-scratching catfight begin when they both obviously know how to actually fight? On a side note, what happened to Shazza's gun?

The Yowie runs right past Shazza? Why? If these inconsistencies are planned, we really need some hint as to the Yowie's motives.

The dialogue while the Yowie is close enough to be swing-and-missing behind them doesn't work. If they're gonna say anything, I think it just has to be a short sentence.

Is 106 supposed to be the major reveal of the Yowie? I thought we'd been seeing it this whole time… By the way, by the time we reach this reveal, there's nothing to root for, really. Shazza vs. the Yowie -- well, we hope she dies, I guess. All Wesley and Cindy have done is run. It's a climax filled with protagonists doing nothing interesting, basically. Wesley falls into a pit, Cindy stumbles into the lodge for help…I dunno, it sort of feels like things just taper out.

---

Yeah, so I definitely don't like the ending. Has a bit of a "what's the point" feel to it. It's not problematic that it's "downbeat," particularly, it's just that it winds up feeling anticlimactic. They just get killed off one by one until all of them are gone. Usually, the middle section kills a bunch of people off one by one, but then we get some additional story with the last few people. The Cindy/Shazza showdown was good, but there just wasn't a climax that had a clear goal; they basically ran around in the woods for the second half of the script and continued to run around until the end, with little change in stakes.

How are those stakes gonna get higher at the end?

The other thing that I think was slightly problematic was the lack of a clear protagonist, or at least a sorta primary couple, early on in the movie. We eventually figure out that it's about Wesley and Cindy, and the duplicitous Nick, but we only know that it's about them once their drama becomes central, if that makes sense. It would be nice to have a little moment between Wesley and Cindy at the start -- not a big moment like the fight, but a little moment, maybe starting the story with them alone -- that signalled to us that these are the people whose story we're specifically here to see.

Shazza was great.

I mentioned a few logistical problems I had above -- the main one that I think really needs to be dealt with is what the Yowie is doing, exactly. Why does it sometimes kill and not eat, sometimes kill to eat, and sometimes not kill at all?

The structure was fine, although I'd lose ten pages off the script, and I'd lose most of it in the first act -- I think I started out by saying that these people aren't particularly a bunch of fun to hang out with, and I think that holds true…they're all a bit grating in their own ways. I think all of them would benefit from some specific attention and some work to bring out their unique traits, and what little things about them might make them more likeable. With the exception of Benny, of course -- he's as he should be.

The only gag that really didn't work for me was Cindy throwing the rock. Just too over the top.

Anyway, a couple fun twists and turns, and all the gore anyone could ask for -- this is a fun little creature feature already. But it needs a climax and, I think, more likeable characters. The more we like 'em, the more engaged we are. The more they show empathy and sympathy for each other, the more engaged we are.

This was a fun read Michael, cheers!

Chris
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trickyb
Posted: May 2nd, 2014, 5:46pm Report to Moderator
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Heretic, Morrow, thanks for your reviews, lots for me to think about and you've raised some valid points which are a great help.

I'm glad you thought it was fun and enjoyed the overall story.

Thanks for taking the time to have a read and post your thoughts, I will defiantly return the favor.

Let the re-writing begin

Cheers

Michael


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Dressel
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Hey Michael,

Just finished up the script.  Right up front, I liked the second half a lot more than the first half.  Actually, let me back up and start off by saying that your formatting is solid and I didn't really have any problems with it.  In my notes below, I'll point out some typos and what not, but your style/formatting never held up my read.

Ok, time to be a broken record.  I didn't like any of the people in the group, just like the guys above.  This made it difficult to get through the first half, because it's really just them talking.  I especially didn't like Benny, and wanted to see the Yowie crush his skull immediately.  It also didn't help that I wasn't a big fan of the humor in the script, so none of the jokes really landed for me.

The main problem is that the first half of the script is just kind of bland and predictable with characters I don't really care about.  Then Shazza shows up and I swear it becomes a different script.  It's a lot breezier read, with some cool kills to boot.  It was the real boost your script needed.  If I were you, I would do a complete re-write of the first 40 or so pages, but that's just me.  I'd focus on at least one character we can root for, because as it stands now, I couldn't find myself rooting for any of them.  Actually, the opposite happened, and I found myself rooting AGAINST them, and hoping either Shazza or the Yowie would do them in.

p.3 – The opening isn't that much fun to read (because we 100% know where it's going and it's a lot of description), but I imagine it'll probably be more fun to watch.  I'd try to tighten it up a bit.  I did like the skull crackin' though.

p.3 – I'm personally not a fan of swearing in descriptions unless it really adds something, so I'd lose the “cock”.  It could immediately turn someone off to your script.

p.8 – “too” should be “to”

p.8 – Check your apostrophes (I've seen this multiple times already).  You should be putting an 's when it's possessive.  Like, “Nick's seat”

p.7-10 – You take up a good 3 pages re-iterating that Benny's a dick.  I don't know if this is necessary, as it's just kind of repetitive.  You did a good job with the flashback, and I don't think the porn joke is funny enough to keep this much material.  You could be doing a lot more with these 3 pages.

p.10 – The comedy isn't really my type of humor, so it's continuing to fall flat. (Priest joke)

p.10 – “Your” should be “you're”

p.11 – I really don't think they'd anally probe someone on some random guy's word.

p.11- At this point I'm realizing that Benny is clearly a favorite character of yours, but you're really giving him too much dialogue and his schtick is becoming repetitive.  There are several other characters we should be getting to know now.

p.13 – I'm sorry, but the VO is kind of a cheap way of delivering information.  Especially because none of the information is anything new.

p.16 – I would lose this entire exchange. I got interested when he shot the roo, but immediately lost interest when you went off on a tangent.

p.18- You're making Benny waaaaay too unlikable.  No one would be friends with this guy, let alone bring him on a trip.  It doesn't make any sense.  And now I'm starting to wonder what the point of the kangaroo bit is.

p.22 - “You mean English?” - Good line.

p.29 - “They should be in fucking jail getting freckle fucked on a daily basis.” -  Why is everyone so fucking vulgar?

p.33 - “We've had a good trip up until now.” -  Have they?

p.34 – Why IS no-one else worried about the very obviously dead dog?

p.43 – I agree with Heretic, Shazza IS a breath of fresh air.  Good character.

p.47 – Seriously, Shazza is the character I've been waiting for.  Introduce her earlier.

p.56 – The locals plotline is an interesting turn.

p.61 – I feel like The Yowie just shows up every now and then to remind us its his film.  I don't really feel like it is though.  He seems disconnected from his own story.

p.71 – I'm a sucker for a good death scene, and that one is quite good.

p.75 – Shazza's story is really well done.

p.83- Yeah, Shazza's still awesome. (Arm hackin')

p.96 – Shazza/Yowie attack against Amy is good stuff

p.107 – Ugh, please don't end with Benny and a rape joke

Hope this helps, and I hope you don't think I was too harsh.  Like I said, my main problems lie in the first 40 pages.

-Matt


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Heretic
Posted: May 15th, 2014, 11:25pm Report to Moderator
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Quoted from Dressel
p.107 – Ugh, please don't end with Benny and a rape joke


Word. Seconded.
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trickyb
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Hey Dressel, thanks for the exchange, I should have yours up by tomorrow.

First up Benny is being cut, badly written character - my bad.

I agree that the gang need to be more likeable and a leader really needs to emerge and take control.  

The yowie itself will get a rework, might even give it some sort of goal so it just doesn't pop up for random kills.

Glad you liked Shazza, she is my favourite character by far.

Overall you nailed it along with the others and have given me advice I can use.

I appreciate your time and effort

Heretic I will get a review on one of yours during the week

Cheers Michael


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