Scarefest episode 7 - My Valentine by Gabriel Moronta (Mr. Ripley) - Short, Horror - A prequel to Closed In, this is a background story on how James met Emma. - doc, format 8)

Hey Gabe,

I liked this one. It's not perfect, but I really liked it anyways.

I love your style of writing. It is an "in your face, what you see is what you get" style. It's so simple and yet it's so effective.

The story is a good, creepy little jealousy script. And Iliked the end. It was menacing.

I think the biggest problem for this script is the dialog. It's very hammy.

There were also a few spelling errors through out, but those don't really bother me.

There are a couple of times where you called Jake, Jack.

Overall, I liked it alot. Just fix the dialog and make it more real. 8/10

~Zack~

Hey Gabe,

This sort of plays out like a dark teenage fairytale in a way.  It was a little hard to follow, especially with all the jumping around you did and shifting of locations but I think I got the gyst of it.  One suggestion - I assume the VO's are meant to imply that Emma and James are speaking on the phone.  If that's the case you might want to indicate this in the description.

As well, Tom and James appear to be friends.  In fact Tom seems to have some sort of hold over him, almost a Leopold and Loeb sort of bond.  You might want to explore this a bit more.  I know this is a short so it's never easy to flesh out all of your characters completely but I think this relationship needs a little more developing.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the cryptic nature of your writing; it fits the story you're telling but a few extra details might bring this to life.  I like the transition shot going from a closed locker to complete darkness.  This may be considered stepping over the line into director territory but I like to think us writers can get away with it from time to time.

Nice job, just could use a bit of tweaking.  One other thing - I'd go into your spell-checker and hide the spelling and grammer mistakes.  It's listed under options.  You just check the box.  It'll look more professional that way.

-Mike

Thanks guys for the read. Cryptic is my middle name, lol. but yeah. What I focused in this one was trying to show an arc. But I understand what you mean about locations.  

The scene between Tom and James is an idea that I'm playing around with to include in the revision. Tom is James' killer side.  If more readers like this, then I'm keeping it.

I noticed the errors before, and I'm planning on to fix these. Not now though, I'm working on Closed In. I'm about 10pgs into it.

Thanks guys for the read,
Gabe

Quoted from Mr.Ripley The scene between Tom and James is an idea that I'm playing around with to include in the revision. Tom is James' killer side.  If more readers like this, then I'm keeping it.

So Tom doesn't really exist? It's a neat idea, but I think it needs to be more clear.

~Zack~

Hey Gabe,

This was a little hard to follow at times but I kinda liked the end result anyway. A couple of things threw me off though; first, you shouldn't get too technical iro. colours and whether everyone is on mute - that hurts it a bit. Second, is it Jake or Jack? Or are they two different characters.

Once you introduced Tom this script became a bit too Mr. Brooks'esque (split personalities) for my liking. But then again I felt it worked quite good actually.

All in all a good one.

Cheers
Rob

Hey Sniper (I'll get to premonitions) :),

My middle name is cryptic. lol. When creating this short, I was focusing on character arc., which I hopefully accomplished. But the Mr. Brooks reference, I see what you mean. I saw that movie thinking to myself like: wow that was my next idea. lol. But quite different since there are certain restrictions when Tom comes out. This is an idea that I'm planning to use in my Closed In revision script (a feautre).

This story primarily has been bothering me to get out. It intially started with James calling on the telephone but, learning from my other script, the Obscure, about starting the story at the problem, I decided to give some background. All I need to do is connect these scenes better. And as Zack, make things more apparent.  

Thanks for the read,
Gabe

OK Mr. Ripley, this is #8 of the 8 "Scarefest" scripts.

I don't want to be harsh or mean, and maybe I have been to the other "Scarefest" writers, but that's not my intent.

This doesn't work for me at all.  I understand what you were trying to do, but it doesn't come across coherently...at all.  The opening scenes are really "nothing" scenes, with nothing happening.  There isn't much of anything established in terms of your characters or story.

The split personality thing is ok, but like somene else said, it was done in Mr. Brooks quite well (as well as numerous older movies/stories/etc.), and this script did not get the point across properly.

It was a very confusing read, and hard to follow.  The fact that almost nothing happened made it that much more difficult to follow.

Sorry, but this just doesn't work.

hey Dreamscale,

Thanks for the read and review. And sorry you didnt like it. I'm still learning the craft. What I focused on here was character arc since I had a problem with that a bit in my other scripts. But this will all be rectified in the revise.

Thanks again
Gabe

Hey Gabe, that's what I love to hear!  Great attitude...seriously.  Just read what you write over and over again, and see if you think it makes sense...and flows like you originally thought it did.  Know what I mean?

Keep it up bud.  I like your style.  Best to ya!

Not a bad way to get a date. Kill the boyfriend, then move on into the now vacant cuddle spot...I'm gonna keep an eye for Closed In...It seems odd that Emma would be comfortable with a new boy in her bedroom (especially one that expressed a romantic interest) so soon after Jack's thing...What happened to Jack?..Assume the body was discovered cause she knew that something had happened to him... Formatting Emma has a double introduction, James is Jake in one spot...Suggest changing Jack to something other than a J name, gets a little confusing (real minor nitpick, I know)...Enjoyable read, however.

After reading the other reviews, the idea of Tom being a part of James (a figment of imagination/alternate personality/alter ego)...I don't think it works, especially not in this story...I don't know how James could have kidnapped Jack, tied him up, brought him up to his room, killed him, and disposed of the body all by himself...Maybe if he were a huge, Lenny Like figure, but I don't picture him being that...I picture him more as a pre-radioactive spider Peter Parker...Jack strikes me as bigger, popular and jockish, the kind of guy a gal like Emma might fall for...Two bookish geeks, maybe could pull this off, but just one kid? Pushes the envelope a little too far.

Thanks for the read Blakkwolfe,

Your ideas would be under consideration espeically about James and Tom. I kind of like that. This scarefest short was something that wanted to come out and I guess establish a bit on James and Emma on how I met. In other words, this short is a flashback. Originally I thought of doing this in the future with James and Emma together and then looking back atsa flashback. But decided not to since it will be longer and many people would not be familiar with the story. I think this worked to some degree, but this does not let off the hook to revise :)

Thanks for the read,
Gabe  

Hi Mr Ripley,

I have to be honest with you in that I think this need more work in order to make it work as well on paper as it no doubt does in your head. The idea was good however it really needs at least 2-3 reads to make sense enough for everything to work out. There were quite a few distractions that while do stop the flow of the story and make things harder to understand they can at least be fixed fairly easily.

So I want to try and give you a few ideas that may well help the flow of the story and thus easier to get ..

* Your names need changing, Jenna and Emma just sound far too alike, whenever you mentioned one of them i had to stop and try and think which one it was, you should try to use different sounding names for key characters.

* The first time we are in James' room you open with VOICE #1 and VOICE#2 speaking, at this point we already have been introduced to James and heard his voice, therefore one of the voices should have been JAMES [O.S.].

*You got your [O.S.] mixed up with your [V.O.], the section described above was described as being [V.O.] should have been [O.S.] , same as the telephone call, I am under the impression that telephone calls should be [O.S.] too. It all got a little confusing around the telephone call with Emma and the change of location to James' house and getting the format spot on may well help this.


I have not put the above to be picky or point out errors, I just wanted to highlight some areas where for me personally I felt your choices made the script more hard to follow than it needed to be.

Look it was a good effort though, we never had much time to get these scripts done so there is only so much you can do with limited time. You built some interesting characters and described them well enough but now you have time to re-write this I would suggest you have a go as this is a good idea and could be a decent script.

Thanks Gary

Hey Gm,

Thanks for the review. Be picky as possible. lol. Thats how one learns since it makes the person remember. I looked over what you were talking about and I see what you mean. I'm going to work on a revision for this during this week. Spring break for me. :). I'm in the process of cleaning my scripts and reading scripts.  

Thanks for your honesty,
Gabe  

Hey Gabriel

Just checked out your scarefest episode.  Not read all the previous posts so sorry for any repetition.

First thing I noticed is that there are a quite a few characters introduced at the start and I'm already getting them confused.
I do like the muted opening and your use of black and white.

Emma's introduction is abit strange because you introduced the other characters with their exact age but Emma's she mid teens?

I have to confess that I got really confused with the dialogue from characters, some off screen and others continuing in other scenes...that might just be me.  On second reading it wasa bit clearer, I didn't get that they were talking on the phone.  Not sure you made that clear?

Tom says 'we can still kill her' then says 'pulverize him as he was about to do to you'?  Is it her or him?  Oh okay I think I get it now...they are talking about Jack right?

I liked the concept here of knocking off the boyfriend to get the girl but it was a bit confusing at times, like I said, it might just be me here.  Didn't notice many errors, although I'm never really bothered by them anyway, I prefer to comment on the content.  A good quick read but would have liked to see more horror.  Good effort.

Quoted from Mr.Ripley The scene between Tom and James is an idea that I'm playing around with to include in the revision. Tom is James' killer side.  If more readers like this, then I'm keeping it.

That is identical to Mr. Brooks. I would try and come up with something a little different. Overall the story was fine. A lot was left out however. How does the geek get Jack all tied and taped up? We need to get an idea of how these things happened. Where did they find Jack's body? These are small deatils, but important ones.

Thanks for the read, pants.

I'm aware of the Mr. Brooks similarity. I'm currently thinking of creating something up.

As for the things I left out, I wanted to leave  it for the reader to imagine, I guess. It failed. lol. But I learned. I'm in the moment of revising all my past scripts, so expect a revision on this one. don't know when, but it's coming.

Gabe