Thousand Eye Killer ep.1 - Observing Eyes by Antoine Marshall (raven4000) - Series - Mass murders having been happening for the past couple of months with no witnesses to identify the killer. When a girl, named Alicia, is being chased by three men, a hooded figure comes to her aid. Could her would-be savior be in fact be the same killer? 24 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hey Raven4000 here's my review.

I'll start with a question, do they really draw a chalk outline around a body?  I thought this was a myth, but then murders a not exactally ten a penny where I live.

I wouldn't underline any of your dialogue it's just distracting and not required.

I like the way you introduce Tanya.

You put Tanya made her way back to her motorcycle, this should be written in the present tense, meaning write it as she walks not walked.

You don't need to be so specific with guns, a handgun will do.

You write your action well but some of your dialogue not so.  Early on the police officers don't seem natural in their speech, asking each other what to do?

scratch the P.O.V's you don't need them in a spec script.  I would also lose the SUDDENLY's also.  All the cut away's and return to scenes make this a confusing read.

You introduce Chief Anderson straight away and you should do this all the time.  Earlier in the script you have a lot of characters named as figures and so on before finally introducing them.  By introducing them straight away it makes it easier to read and follow.

You have a few grammer errors but nothing another proof read wouldn't sort out.

I like the violence of Alex's death - nice.

My final thoughts are that your dialogue improves as the story moves forward.  It is a little slasher roadmap but it kept me interested to the end and set up the next installment well.  You tied things together but I just found it too confusing with all the camera directions, I'd lose these for the next episode.

Maybe a little cliched that the school geek is the killer but it like I said it read well.  I'll give the next one a read when it's up.

Tidy the dialogue with the cops at the beginning though.  Also I don't think a paramedic would give the last word on how someone was killed, I think that's down to a coroner or pathologist or someone.

Not too shabby overall though mate.

Thanks for the comment. I got the chalk outline bit from my grandmother, since she said the police did this for a neighbor, but this was in the East coast so I'm not sure on this one.

The cutaways, pov, and such was mostly for my teacher since he wanted the script to have this. Anyway, I agree on this and I definitely will fix it.

The character introduction I had trouble deciding how to do it, since what happens at the beginning with the cops and with Alicia is not the same killer. (minor spoiler)

The killer being the school geek was originally not my intent. Originally, the killer was suppose to be your everyday person and then BAM! Your hit with the fact the person is the killer.

My capstone project will be covering the first half of my story

My original plan was to split the story into a 2-part feature script:
- Thousand Eye Killer Case
- Global Crash Incident (When FBI enter the scene)

Again, thanks for the advice. It will help me when it comes to rewriting it. Also, I'll probably keep people updated on the progress on my feature length script for this.

Hi,

I'm not crazy about the teaser at the beginning. It's kind of loose standing from the rest of the screenplay. Some of your action is in past tense, which is a definite no-no. Beware dialogue that's too on-the-nose, and the underlining is unnecessary and distracting. You introduce a lot of characters very quickly, and at times I found the story hard to follow. I also didn't understand your characters motivations at all times.

I think a lot of your ideas are good, but it's probably a good idea to give the screenplay a few good reads before showing it to people. This piece should probably be longer so that you can explore your characters and their motivations a bit more.

I agree that it is hard to follow at times. The characters' motivations are really explain in the next episode. Well, Alicia's and Judas' are and Tanya's, at the moment, is catching the killer. Like I said in my other post, originally this was meant as a feature script (story-wise) and was to be split into two parts.

Also, I had to edited this version of the story primarily due to my teacher and many other people, who read the original version, finding it graphic (the teaser is completely different, the death of the 3 men are different, and the scene with alicia and alex is more intense).

The episodic version is primarily for my broadcast graphics class, while the feature length version is for my capstone project.