Abra Kadabra by Will Ball (albinopenguin) - Short - Two street side magicians battle it out in this dark comedy sketch. 8 pages - pdf, format 8)

I thought this was good and worked well visually. The ending wasn't as I expected but still worked well, I thought.
Just not sure why they don't notice each other sooner,

best,
H

This is hilarious!  A wonderful sketch.  One addition, though.  Have Magician #1 moan and move before #2 whaps him one more time with the bat!  I loved this.  :)

Hi Will,

I loved this. Great build up, funny throughout, and a good payoff too.

I thought it was very well written, laughed out loud to myself at the line '...It seems as though you left me a tiny present'. Good work, sir!

All in all, a great, fast read. I could imagine this working well on a sketch show.

Keep up the good work

Craig

Will

I enjoyed this or the most part. The idea of two magicians "dualing" with their respective arsenal of magic tricks is an excellent pitch and would make for great viewing if one were to see it for real. Imagine two masters of the craft trying the out do one another with their best tricks, an intriguing nights entertainment I would imagine.

I loved the opening page where you introduced the two going through their procedures for setting up, how one mirrored the other except for the colour contrast in their attire.

I see the comedic angle you went with this and it worked pretty well, can't say I laughed much but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Since you state that its a skitin the logline and nothing more it is pointless for me to go into detail about dialogue, reactions, believability etc because such is the nature of sketches and for that it works fine.

Col.

hey thanks a lot guys for the read and compliments. my entire goal is to come up with scripts that are fairly easy to produce, yet are witty and humorous (with a touch of dark here and there). i promise to read some of your material as well as post some more up- when i finally get a moment's rest. but alas, i just wanted to say thank you.

Hey Will

The opening scene with the two magicians mirroring each other reads a bit clunky.  I think you could tighten this by either saying the white magician mirrors the black magicians actions or maybe use montage.

Also I'd change the names to maybe White Magician and Black Magician as I'm not a fan of # characters, especially as they're your main characters.

You have magician 1 walking over to magician 2 as a volunteer but he's just cut his deck so isn't here already in front of him?

I'm not sure the ending fits the story though, it seems a bit violent for what is essentially a comedy sketch.  Perhaps a stun gun or something would fit better?

I've been a bit negative so far but finally thoughts are that this was a pretty good comedy skit, it was pretty funny throughout and I enjoyed it.

This skit was worth a chuckle.

Loved the bit where rip up the deck of cards and 1# is like: "(shock) you don't have to be a jerk" and 2 is like: "Duh! It's a magic duel."

There is so much magic going on that the end punch line is a bit of a shock and totally diffrent in tone to the rest of the script.

But the truth is that as words on paper your punchline may come across as brutal and savge violence in contrast to everything else, however  on film the physical humour one could milk out of your idea would be gold. It is so unexpected, crude and shocking how could you not laugh.    

thanks for the read guys. ill keep a lot of this in mind when doing the revisions.

funny sidenote. when i first wrote the script, i did label the magicians as "the white magician" and "the black magician." however when rereading it, the script appeared very racist and thus distracted the reader from what i wanted him/her to focus on

and yea the ending is supposed to be a shock with slapstick humor. its kind of the breaking point for the white magician

Hey there, not bad of a script you got there. I liked it. The pacing and the action were good. The dialogue is witty as well.

The only advices are give your magicians names and shorten your first page. The two magicians were essentially doing the same thing in the beginning. So instead of repeating the same action twice, you could've written MAGICIAN #2 did the same thing. That would move the read faster.

The ending was unexpected as well. Magician #2's final action suits his personality.

Good job.

Hi Will. Neat little short you got here. Has that sense of darkish humour like your molester one.
I read the comments first (as usual) so i knew the ending had some contro in it.
Have to say i think it was too much. It detracted from the smart lines that ran through the rest of it.
maybe you could have one magician shrink th eother and plug him in a bottle? I dunno, just a thought.
I see what you were getting at with the ending as is. but IMO it sits uncomfortably with the goodnatured feel of the rest of th escript.
cheers and keep up the good work!

hey everyone. so a small group of filmmakers decided to turn this into a short and i wanted to post the result. overall, i think they nailed the ending

My big problem with this script was the dialog.  It was very on-the-nose and, while I know it was intentional, having the two characters sound alike was just irritating.  It didn't take long before the conversation was a monologue, a seamless flow of chatter.

The ending was cute, though.  I did enjoy that.


Phil

please excuse the shameless self promoting, but another group of filmmakers turned this into a short. normally i wouldnt post it, but they did a really good job. plus i keep getting requests from filmmakers to produce this, and i need to show people how high the bar has been raised.

now when these people approach you to make your shorts, do they ever pay you?   also, how did these guys find this short?  where did you promote it?

Will,

Good looking production and clever premise, congrats.

E.D.

Nice movie. Funny! And good script too.

I think you need to work on the dialog, I noticed the actors didn't sound sincere at all at the beginning - the first two pages perhaps. They are too pompous at the beginning and I understand that's what you wanted but the actors obviously struggled with it.
At first I thought that the actors are green but they are not, the rest of it seems to flow.
Did you write this off an anecdote? I mean I never heard of such anecdote but it could make a good one.

The second production was much better than the earlier one.


Phil

Congrats Will; the short turned out really nice.

hey everyone,

just wanted to say thanks so much for the compliments and advice! i definitely plan on rewriting the dialogue sometime in the near future.

thanks again!

Hmm.  I watched this back in March when you posted the newest adaptation.  I wonder why I didn't reply.

But anyway, this was a decent turnout for a quick little story.  I have to say, the magician in black looks really really familiar to me for some reason.

Anyhow, congrats on getting it filmed.

- Mark