The Watching Moon by A. B. Steel - Short - A stronger, older brother must go to the extreme to save his younger, weaker sibling. 5 pages - pdf, format 8)

While I liked the script, Austin, it was a little too shoot for me.  You were in and out with it.  Unless this was a MoviePoet script, there was no reason to make it this short.  Flesh it out.  Bring out more of the relationship between David and Simon.  And explain who Lee is.  Is he their father?  Brother?  A local bully?  I don't know.


Phil

I took a stab at this and it read fast and easy...there were a few things:

"A screen door slams somewhere off"  What does that mean??

SIMON
What are we doing to do?
*I think this was just a typo...doing should be going...

You will probably have some people say your descripts were too chunky, novelistic almost...I hear it all the time, so in the future you may want to break them up and leave a lil more white space(easier on the eyes of the reader).

Now the only thing I had a problem with really, and maybe it was me, but ...I didn't understand this:
They're burying someone at the beginning, I assumed...but then they kill someone at the end and drive off in the truck??? That is the only part I"m not really clear on. I read it twice to see if maybe I missed something.

Other than that... I loved the story...it's not really original or unique, but I liked the way you told it.

D

Hi - Thought this was okay, but it lacked any real tension.

Might have done with some character descriptions.

Other stuff:

#Sitting not too far away, is SIMON (14).

#Close by, is SIMON, (14). -- I think it's better if the 'close' is emphasised here, and it's shorter.

#Simon looks up at his hero brother. -- Can't really show this.

SIMON
What do we do now?
DAVID
We go home.
David walks away, carrying the shovel with him. Simon jumps
up and follows.
SIMON
Why home?
DAVID
What other choice do we have?

Couldn't help but think it may have ben better to stop at 'We go home' - that might leave the viewer to ask 'Why home'???

Wood paneling. The cheap coffee table is nicked, scratched,
and burned from too many cigarettes. An ashtray overflows
with cigarette butts.
--Might ave been better to get a more general description of the trailer - this focuses on the coffee table, which is okay as a detail, but I don't feel truly orientated in the trailer, and then the TV plays a part, but it's not mentioned initially, and could have been mentioned briefly.

Lee appears very suddenly in the room - again - I'm not sure where the TV is in relation to the room, door etc, but he just 'appears' in front of the TV.

I didn't quite get Lee and Simon's relation. Simon seems very ready to respond to Lee, which makes me think that Lee is not all that bad (at this point). Simon's first interaction with him would rile any father (if that is what Lee is - migh be an uncle). If you wanted to create an uneven balance between the two, then it might have been better to have Simon as more fearful, and maybe get David and Simon to refer to some history of violence or dread at the thought of Lee coming home.

#He charges, a bull in a play pin.
--should be play-pen?

The fight moves into the small kitchen area. Dirty pots and
pans, dishes, and trash litter the counters.
--not too sure that the middle of a fight is a good time to give us a description of the kitchen??

On that... found the fight a little dull???

I generally don't think it's a good idea to say 'x's dead body... etc'. How do we know he's dead? More tension, where we don't know anyway - and you're telling here.

So, overall, it was okay. Key issues for me are that I think Lee needed to be more of a swaggering ogre, so we'd dislike him, and the boys should be more fearful, so we're backing them - at present I don't feel I'm rooting for people, as much as I'm saying "wow - things went t-its up there...".

Simon

Hey A.B

This wasn’t too bad, I liked it but felt it could be better if extended. I wonder whether you did this for a competition and it was a 5 page limit?

Simon and David were vague, not much there for us to care about their situation which is a shame because if you had worked on this relationship more, I think this could have been really good.

Lee came across as quite a mystery to me, who was he? If we understood more about his obvious strained relationship with the boys then we might feel for their plight more. Just a thought.

The fight scene could be cleaned up and tightened IMO.

All the other things I noticed have already been spotted and mentioned by Simon and Dena which leaves me little to go on so and I won’t repeat what they said.

Good work. :)

Steve

I read the entire script, believe it or not.

I don't have much good to say, but I will say it's not piss poor either, so that's a positive.

The writing isn't good.  Lots of ridiculous over description with completely unnecessary adjectives thrown here and there, that actually come off rather humorous.  The logline is a big old red flag for this, actually, with the "stronger, older brother" and "younger, weaker sibling".  Action writing is weak.  Overall, I'd say it's mostly awkward.

The story itself doesn't bring much to the table, as it's too ambiguous and tries to hard to be sneaky and cool.  The problem here, as far as I can tell, is that the "body" of the script is all a Flashback that isn't labeled, in order to hide or mask what's going on, or what went on.  I think this is why Dena didn't quite understand the beginning and end.

We don't know any of the characters and because of that, we can't really care what happens to any of them.

If 5 pages was a max length here for some sort of contest, the story and concept is too big.  If not, the script is just under developed.  But then again, this ain't no big-time concept any way you look at it, so it most likely comes down to the writing itself and what you chose to write and "show", and what you didn't.

Sorry to sound harsh, but this could have and should have been much better.

Good luck.

Pretty much agree with what's already been said. I'm not sure a non-linear approach is that good an idea for a five pager. Readers generally get annoyed or confused when flashbacks/forwards aren't labelled clearly. If you don't wanna do that, make sure they run smoothly in the narrative and and there is a payoff to it.

To reiterate about Lee's character -- who is he exactly? My guess is step-father. But why is this not divulged in the script? We need more to go on with regards to why the older brother finally snaps and takes him on. Spoiling the Bug's Bunny hour and ordering him to get a beer isn't enough.

I don't usually harp on about typo's but -- 5 pages? It doesn't take along time to clean up 5 pages before submitting. Get a third party to have a quick scan of it.

I thought this was alright, though...and it would take no time at all to improve it considerably.