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Pond Life by Anthony Cawood writing as Harry Essex - Short, Horror - Rumours of a strange creature entice two young friends to explore the distant woodlands and the pond deep within. - pdf, format
I didn't think this was bad at all. Well written in my opinion. I do agree with Rick that it could use some more depth. better foreshadowing. Theme. Irony or whatever, but I definitely think you gave a good start at something and thank you for using the monster from the blck lagoon. Someone seriously need to remake that one.
Watching approaching dots is not going to grab your audience. I think you can lose this setup and not affect the story at all.
Nicely written for the most part. Some of the action read awkwardly, like the sentence Dustin highlights.
I did start to lose focus as the action centred on Glen just running around aimlessly.
It did seem to me the creature was trying to help Glen and I thought the reveal was going to be another monster was in the pond but it didn’t happen and it’s didn’t really resolve anything at the end.
Low budget, a classic monster and one good make-up effect (maybe two though with Dazzer’s body? I dunno) so well done for that and for taking part.
-Mark
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I read the entire script...in less than 5 minutes.
For the most part, the writing is good in terms of being clean and mistake free.
The not so good news...
The style here ain't for me. It's very sparse, non visual, and non detailed. 90+% of the passages are 1 line, and it's nearly impossible to write visually this way. At 7 pages, this is most likely well under 5 minutes of film, as written. You throw in some asides and unfilmables, and in a non visual script, that's a big problem for me.
I caught about 20 or so mistakes, most in awkward phrasings. The action writing has some issues.
The bad news...
There's no story here. There's no plot here. There aren't any characters here. There's no reason for anything that is happening.
Setting your characters at 7 and 8 years old is also a problem, as it doesn't work for what's taking place.
At best, this is an intro to a feature, but it definitely does not stand by itself as a short, based on the above.
This will be very soon forgotten because there's nothing memorable here at all.
The ending is so insanely quick, my guess is you ran out of time...and if that's the case, I understand completely.
I don't know if the short sentences is just your writing style, but it seems the way it's done is to up the page count. I enjoyed your visuals here, but was a but turned off by opening with a montage. Once the story gets going it becomes a bit repetitive. A lot of running through the tangled brush. There's really not much meat here. A lot of fluff. Like I said, the visuals were good as was the writing. I think if you came up with more tonthe story this could be a decent script. As is, didn't really grab me.
The one line thing aggrevated me a lot and forced me to skip through some parts due to it mostly being one lines with no reason of being there. We don't really need to know that at the end 'He doesn't look back'.
Overall, I guess this was a little Meh for me, it didn't feel too tense and felt cliche, Idk, the lack of dialogue or interest in the characters killed it for me.
Didn't really mind this, but couldn't really get into it with either... need a bit more gusto?
I did, at one point, envision it as a 3D Animation along the cinematic presence of ParaNorman, Corpse Bride, The Box Trolls, ect; that actually made it somewhat cooler for me, I love anything along the stop motion style, especially if it has dark overtones.
I agree with Jeff as well, this comes off more like a teaser at the beginning of something bigger. What that bigger is, I'll leave up to you. Writing's good IMO.
Hey, this is a great Halloween tale which works with suspense throughout. Cool monster.
I have to say that I believe, with all that moving shapes, sounds, and whistles, I only can imagine it as a radio play yet. So to say, I think the ongoing action should be bundled somehow into clear distinct segments or you'd have to build the most spectacular adventure park in those woods and pond area - with regards to how it is composed in your script now. Even if I think this is an audio piece for now (@ and why not go that way anyway)... I liked it
This was okay for what it was, but it felt more like a sequence than a story. It's bare bones. Kids investigate something strange, something strange attacks them. Almost feels like it's missing a 3rd act. It could benefit from more mystery or some suspense felt along the way. Maybe clues, like gory animal remains, to build up to the attack. Or something connected to the missing girl that's mentioned. You could improve the character dynamic as well. Get some story mileage out of the boys by giving them something to learn or overcome. The story didn't developed so much as just happen.
It also seemed kind of odd that this thing wouldn't kill Glen when he was knocked unconscious right in front of it.
"Did something undulate beneath the surface?" Dunno, you tell us.
This one didn't do much for me, sorry to say. I skimmed toward the end, as it was becoming quite a chore to get through. It wasn't terrible, just the definition of "meh". You've got a strange style of writing too. I feel this could have been written in three or four pages and was needlessly prolonged.
Overall, I liked it. However, the last few pages did not make use of white space enough to make this suspenseful. Much of the narrative, although mostly stacked, seemed to, from time to time, take away from the pace.
I'm not sure about the opening series of shots at the beginning- I didn't see much point in it.