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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Series  ›  Beyond Doubt Moderators: bert
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  Author    Beyond Doubt  (currently 2129 views)
Don
Posted: January 29th, 2015, 6:17pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Beyond Doubt by Lee O'Connor - Series, Mystery, Suspense - A parapsychologist endeavours to unleash the mystifying case of a seven year old boy experiencing a powerful phenomenon, linking him to the disappearance of two teenage girls on the remote Scottish Orkney Island of Eday. 57 pages - pdf, format


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Revision History (2 edits; 1 reasons shown)
Don  -  February 1st, 2015, 11:41am
revised draft
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LeeOConnor
Posted: February 2nd, 2015, 11:22am Report to Moderator
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Hi folks,

Please use this link to view the script.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tk47m75up7b98tr/Beyond%20Doubt.pdf?dl=0

Also check out the book 'The other Daddy - a world away' written by Claire Voet.

http://www.clairevoet.com

Thanks

Lee
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DS
Posted: February 23rd, 2015, 10:18am Report to Moderator
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Hey Lee:

Congratulations on finishing an adaption. Must have been interesting to write, especially turning it into a pilot instead of a complete story. I've meant to read this in its entirety for a while, but haven't quite had the chance. Almost a month since you submitted, but here goes, all my thoughts completely subjective.


The opening reads confusingly and it took me some time to understand the timeline. Both of the year supers start off on very brief scenes and the title card pops up at a strange spot before the next Int. on the scene that was already established as 2011. I believe this part could do with more clarity.


Quoted Text
INT. EDAY - ABANDONED WORLD WAR II AIR-RAID SHELTER

SUPER: 2003.

BLACK SCREEN.

STRAINED HEAVY BREATHING.


I'm also confused here. Does it cut to black or is it always been black? There's a match lit slightly afterwards, but then it's more so darkness than a black screen. There's no description of the abandoned world war shelter so maybe it's been black all along? I don't know.

Very brief one-word character descriptions on only a selective amount of people, looks weird. Not sure why you decided to bring out handsome for Andrew. I get the scottish, but the handsome looks strange in contrast to the lack of character description on others. I was also confused on who the eccentric and hippy character description belonged to at first considering how huddled up it all was at first. Looks like the first pages need some organizing so far.

P5: I like the Scottish feel to it all so far, especially how you've incorporated the accent into the dialogue. This scene however, feels both melodramatic and something I've seen tens of times before with the exact setup and even almost exactly the same dialogue as this:


Quoted Text
ANGUS
Why haven't the police found them
yet? Fur Christ sakes.
DAVID
They're doing their best, Angus. We
need to be patient.


P17: Missed ballet show, the usual you're not home enough because of work and this is the last chance with an important situation happening soon. Feels familiar with not much of a new angle to make it interesting.

P22: ANDREW
Amy. Don't swear. Just because I'm
not at home doesn't mean you can be
a foul mouth.

Really? She said pissed off and she's 14. Foul mouth? Sounds kind of weird to me.

P26:
Quoted Text
EXT. WHITFIELD HOUSE

Tom approaches, holding a paper bag from the bakery.

TOM
Cheese and tomato, OK?


Who's he telling this to?


P32: Mrs Fishwick's attitude seems to have taken a quick 360. I noticed this already happening at the door when she gave in very quickly.

P36: The radio/TV analogy is pretty fascinating. Most interesting dialogue part so far.

P41: Wasn't the boy just sick and the last scene was about him not going with the father? Have I missed something?

I liked the ending montage, however wasn't sure why the detectives were bagging the girl's stuff up only now. I'd say that would be something for the uniform officers to do and it would be done earlier.

Overall: The supernatural angle is interesting, but I think there are no interesting characters that could carry the story. The only one I found really interesting was McEwen and he was in it for very little time. The cat lady was okay too, but the part I brought out above made her dialogue/stances somewhat contradictory to me. The main characters in here were definitely meant to be Louise and Andrew.

Louise was an annoying character imo. She was either whining about something or being the perfect parent with really patronizing dialogue, especially towards Callum.

Andrew had the sense that he could be interesting, especially so when he was explaining the radio/tv analogy, but so much time of the script was wasted to his family problems. Those family problems were uninteresting and brought out in a way that had been done a thousand times before. There was even the cliche missed ballet bit.

The dialogue feels wooden and as if everything happened in a very formal setting at all times. I for one didn't sense too much character in it. It was also quite expositionary at times:

A few examples:


Quoted Text
JESSICA
I'm serious Andrew. It's Mummy and
Daddy's silver wedding anniversary.
We've got to be at the Crown Hotel
for their party at seven pm.


They'd both be aware of this already. You could turn this around with Andrew forgetting what time it was and Jess having to blurt it out because of that.


Quoted Text
LOUISE
I find it so hard sleeping now
since Jack left.

EMILY
You poor thing. How is Callum
coping with the separation?

LOUISE
He seems fine. Jack comes to get
him every Friday, he wishes he
could see him more but...


And this piece of information that they'd definitely already know:


Quoted Text
We are here to film a documentary
about paranormal sightings. This
building in fact used to be an old
prison hospital for over seven
thousand French prisoners of the
Napoleonic wars. It is said that a
nurse carrying a lantern roams up
and down the lane and haunts this
house.


You used a camrecorder for the information drop later on and it worked much better. Why not do that here, too?


I also noticed that the three stories and the two timelines didn't tie together apart from a really quick shot of Callum dreaming about the eday. I think that the pilot needs more, a more clear tie-in so people could understand why they're watching these two seperate timelines and three parts of the story playing out. The ending is Tom finding out that something is wrong in 2011 and in 2003, the audience finds out something is definitely up while Louise thinks that there might not be. Not bad, but one thing did bug me about Louise/Callum. The script seemed to want to avoid the question: "What the hell is this other daddy you're talking of?" and the way it was avoided didn't seem natural.

In my opinion the script focused too much on personal drama instead of establishing the main storyline. I'd recommend focusing more on the storyline, the kidnapping of the girls, the supernatural angle and give a lot less screentime to all the personal stuff, especially on Andrew's side. It was the boringest part and it didn't have anything unique around it that screams "This needs to be made." The supernatural angle did and while the handling of the kidnapping also may have not had too much unique to it, it was just so much more interesting. You could show that press conference taking place for example.

The dialogue and its characteristics for each character need spicing up, too.

Hope you can get something out of this, see what you agree with. Good luck!
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LeeOConnor
Posted: February 24th, 2015, 4:10am Report to Moderator
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Hi ds,

Thanks for the read and or opinions, i'm humbled.

This was quite a difficult one to write as the book is very much backwards and forwards. To do this structurally where the author wants 6 episodes was a challenge.

A production company that was in association with ITV picked this one up, told us to include more personal issues with Andrew so that we care about this character. Personally, I think you maybe be right on this matter for this episode, but when you read episode two everything that you have read in ep 1 is cleared up. Probably not the right thing to do for a pilot, but there is so much to cram in on episode 1. Primarily, we wanted the story to be suspenseful but not over the top like how er see most british drama/thrillers.

Your right at the beginning, it is always black before the match is lit, i will amend this.

The dialogue is something I did not do, these are quotes from the book, so there is not much I could do about that.

What I didn't want to do was change the novel too much, I wanted people who read the book to see it as it is on screen. I agree some of it is cliche and has been done a million times before but sometimes the cliche is needed to get the story across.

I don't like stating the obvious in scripts like you have mentioned with the dialogue, but as this is quite backwards and forwards in with three different stories I feel the dialogue is what will keep it all together, even if the characters will in fact already know the obvious.

In terms of characters and descriptions, you are right, they do need more describing. This is something I will work on with the author.

This script has had so much interest and is currently been looked at by other production companies, but I posted it on here for others to read, comment and suggest, or perhaps someone might pick it up?

Having another pair of eyes has helped a lot. It's all well and good a producer telling me there is nothing wrong with the script but I always like to hear what other people have to say, so again your comments have helped majorly.

Cheers DS,

Lee
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DS
Posted: February 24th, 2015, 1:52pm Report to Moderator
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Quoted from LeeOConnor
A production company that was in association with ITV picked this one up



Quoted from LeeOConnor
This script has had so much interest and is currently been looked at by other production companies


That's fantastic, hope the interest leads somewhere. Since the script is going around places, I presume the first picking up fell through. What happened there?
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LeeOConnor
Posted: February 25th, 2015, 4:04am Report to Moderator
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Me too.

Yeah it fell through, the producer lost his enthusiasm but a far as producers go, I felt that he was unprofessional and was in over his head with this size of project.

But i'd rather it take longer to find the right producer than a producer who will turn it into something crap.
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LeeOConnor
Posted: May 10th, 2015, 10:27am Report to Moderator
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Here is a revised draft of BD. Would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tk47m75up7b98tr/Beyond%20Doubt.pdf?dl=0
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LeeOConnor
Posted: June 3rd, 2015, 2:02pm Report to Moderator
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Made a few changes to the script as mentioned by other readers.

Would love some feedback.

Thanks

Lee
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Anon
Posted: June 3rd, 2015, 3:38pm Report to Moderator
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Quoted from LeeOConnor


The dialogue is something I did not do, these are quotes from the book, so there is not much I could do about that.




I'm no expert. But surely an adaptation is exactly that. You should hone the dialogue for the screen. In a book - people can't see what's going on. You can show that - so the dialogue shouldn't need to be an obvious tell. It put me off reading further to tell you the truth.
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LeeOConnor
Posted: June 4th, 2015, 10:18am Report to Moderator
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Hi Alex,

Thanks for the read and comment.

That is a valid point, However, I'm not sure which part of the dialogue is an obvious tell? I understand in some cases in a novel the characters may need to give away the obvious but on this script I don't think they have.

We knew when writing the dialogue that we wanted as much of what was in the book to be included in the script and not change it too much, we felt as this story is full on from the word go, we knew in some cases we had to include the obvious line for the audiences sake just so they would understood what exactly was happening. Ideally, for me, I would like to think the audience would be intelligent enough to understand what was going on without the characters actually telling you.

At which point was the dialogue obvious to and at what point did you get to?
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GreenGecko
Posted: June 4th, 2015, 11:04am Report to Moderator
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So what should we be looking for here? Are the dialogue and plot set in stone? How much can you change?


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Anon
Posted: June 5th, 2015, 6:55am Report to Moderator
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Hi Lee,

Since you asked I took another look at this. I realised I actually read an older version - so I took a look at the new one. But I still think on balance you've got too much tell in the dialogue and not enough visual things moving the plot forward.

If we go from the beginning, there's the police seating - ok cool. Then the reporters start being perhaps a bit to obviously descriptive. For instance they give a date of the disappearance then tell us how many day ago it was. This is doubling up - and things like clothing and weather tell us rough dates anyway.

Then there's this bit of dialogue -

ANGUS
Why haven’t the police found them
yet? Fur Christ sakes.

DAVID
They’re doing their best, Angus. We
need to be patient.

We know the police haven't found them and we can assume they're doing their best - we've seen a crowd of them searching. If you want to introduce these characters with some dialogue - make them tell us something we haven't already seen.

Then a short dream - cool.

Then for the next 10 pages the plot is moved forward with dialogue only. There's one exception - but there's a problem with it. Let me explain -

Next scene the two kids have a conversation to explain 'the other daddy' situation quite clearly. Later on, you show a picture with 'for my other daddy' written on. A nice show of this pic would have made this scene's dialogue redundant.

Then emily and louise in the bank - they happen to be talking about the separation launching straight in with this tell -

LOUISE
I find it so hard sleeping now since Jack left.

Then Miss Turner's conversation with Louise. This exchange is so obviously talking about a boy who's talking to ghosts or experiencing physic phenomenen you almost feel they should mention it - or joke about it. But it is again very dialogue driven like this -

MISS TURNER
It’s not only the comments he makes
or his drawings that bother me,
Callum’s been very withdrawn
recently. He doesn’t seem to want
to mix with other children. It
concerns me that he sits alone
during playtime’s. I’ve tried to
encourage him to play with the
others but he doesn’t want to. It’s
like he’s in his own little world.
Has he been acting any differently
at home or mentioned anything?

Now you break this scene up with a flashback. But the irony is, it's a flashback to another conversation. It could have flashed back to an instance that shows what Callum's been going through perhaps? Then you wouldn't need so many detailed explanations like the one above.

Miss Turner even says 'sorry to point out the obvious' at one point and then does so - explaining something we can see.

Now there's one piece in this scene that moves things on visually -

IMAGE: A PERSON LOCKED IN A ROOM, THE WORDS "SMOKING DEN"ABOVE IT.

But there's an issue with it. Have a look at the average 7-year-old drawing. Now ask yourself, how do I draw a person in locked room? Show the lock on the other side of the door? Showing a room is hard for a little kid as it is. A stick-man in a square would be more likely.

Then we go to this -

MIKE
Well, welcome to Whitfield house. As I’m sure you have been informed…

Mike looks at Tom and Helen.

MIKE (CONT’D)
We are here to film a documentary about paranormal sightings. This building in fact used to be an old prison hospital for over seven thousand French prisoners of the Napoleonic wars. It is said that a nurse carrying a lantern roams upand down the lane and haunts this house.

This dialogue again says it's going to point out the obvious - something characters would already know - then does it anyway. There are a hundred different visual ways to tell people they're filming a documentary about the paranormal.

I stopped reading there. And a lot of this may look picky. And some of it is. Some of this stuff is fine. But all of it together - tells me you have an definite imbalance of tell over show.

All my personal opinion of course. And I can tell it's an intriguing tale. But not for me for reasons above.
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LeeOConnor
Posted: June 5th, 2015, 7:33am Report to Moderator
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Thanks for your thought and opinions Alex, Valid points.

In areas I do think you may be right with the obvious dialogue, I will look over this and try and even out the balance.

Lee
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Anon
Posted: June 5th, 2015, 8:39am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from LeeOConnor
Thanks for your thought and opinions Alex, Valid points.

In areas I do think you may be right with the obvious dialogue, I will look over this and try and even out the balance.

Lee


My pleasure. It was a useful exercise for me to look at this - I struggle with the very same issues I raised.
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