The Grotto by Marc Neesam (trax) - Short, Horror - It is coming up to christmas time and a single father has to take his son to visit Santa at the local shopping center's grotto. But things are not what they seem. 12 pages - rtf, format 8)

Thanks for the feedback, have just got back off holiday so was nice to come back and see my scripts up and feedback here :D

This was one of the early scripts I did (which while no excuse can explain alot :P) and I will take your points on board cheers.

Do you recommend any of your scripts for me to review. Tit for tat, and all that.

Formatting was not quite right. Camera directions galore.

Conceptually, I thought this was an ok idea for a horror story. I don't think it is the greatest fit for a 12 page short.  It needed to be longer. I wanted to see more motivation provided for the bad guys and more character development. I ddin't feel very involved with the characters. The end didn't really work for me, Bobby's excuse didn't fly.  I also could not tell if Santa was involved or not from what you wrote - was that intentional?

You have an interesting start, but it needs to be longer.  I wouldn't say full length, but longer.

pg 1
crossing his arm - crossing his arms
pg 2
camera directions. You can get away with camera directions sometimes, this is not one of them.
fading in or out - nup.
pg 3
waves forward?
more camera directions! Into frame.
your character only need to be CAP'd once.
pg 6
GEORGE ignores his some  - his son?
pg 8
GEORGE sighs and slips out of be - bed?
Shadows filling - fill
Interesting - Georges phone call looks sort of like a christmas tree.
pg 9
Would recommend putting white space in your longer descriptive passages.

They already said something about your format so you know, I think your paragraphs are to bunched up it messes up the flow a little .

Rewrite it stretch the whole story out make it a full length the story is there I liked the horror and add more action with Santa give more reason for Bobby the Elf.