Watch Tower by James Hughes (mr. ow) - Short - A young girl is confined to a motel with her conspiracy theorist mother, a serial killer stalks the halls at night, reptilian shape shifting aliens are planning a global takeover. How are they connected?  21 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hello James...

I cracked this open... what software are you using?  If it's MM let me know.  Dreamscale gave me a good tip to fix the spacing issue.   And I'll pass it on too you.

1)  by page 8, I was going to stop.  At page 13, I almost bailed, but I finished.

2)  Yeah I get the shape shifting bit, but I didn't make any connection because the majority of your script was confusing.  And it started with Avis and Tabatha.

Who are they?  I assume, Avis is suppose to be Sammy, and Tabatha, Cambria.  It threw me for a loop.  I mean they just came from out of the blue.

Page 8, when Cambria emerges from the bathroom, the dialogue coming from Emerson doesn't ring true.  "Where are your manners." And when he's recounting the previous murders, I might have took a different approach to that.  It took me a second to figure out what you were trying to do.  But I got it.

The biggest thing you want in a script is clarity and I had to backtrack several times.

Consider breaking you some of the huge blocks of Cambria's dialogue.  The writing could be much tighter, a bit of redundancy for sure.  As the script went on, it got weird, especially with the snake turning back into, well you know what.  I dunno... maybe cut that part out, because some of this could be trimmed.

Typos throughout...

What is a "Vlog."  Do you mean "blog?"

"Cherry stands, in a skimpy at outfit, at the foot of the bed."

I probably would have went with a (V.O.) for the phone conversations.

These are just a few quick notes.  Forgive my errors.

I just felt you never really had control over this piece.  The execution needs to be much better,  But this is JMHO.  I'll give it another look later today.  It's late,

Ghostie

Hey,

I totally forgot I posted this on here. Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.

Thanks for taking a look at it Ghost and finishing through with it. I bet it was tough.

I did this as a final project for a screenwriting class at college, but since it was a little late (and rushed) I never got any feedback.

Totally forgot that I had Avis and Tabatha in their (it was their original names, I'm glad you were able to pick up on that), I knew I left the name change incomplete somewhere in there.

A vlog is a blog. instead of writing it out, it's done by video. Vlogging. I guess the trendy wording hasn't caught on so it's easy to catch.

To be honest I had a different ending and story planned, but I rushed it and turned it into something that really didn't connect. I'm sorry you had to back track, but it's good to know that happened, I'm not too proud of this story.

I will try to make my next script an easier read.

Again thanks for so much for taking a look at it.

BTW what are the spacing issues? I did use MM. How do I fix them?

Also I tried to click on one of the scripts in your sig, but there's no link.

Send me over to something you've written and I'll give it a read.

In reference to double spacing between your slugs only... a good bit fof infor from Dreamscale...

Go to the "Format" tab.  Then, click "Edit Script Formats...".  Inside there, you'll see that you have the ability to alter literally everything in your script's format.  Click on "Scene Headings" and change the "Lines Before:" to "2.0" in the "Line Spacing (in lines)" section, second from the top.

That's it.  Looks much better.

I got the vlog, okay, fair enough.

My sig, those are just loglines of my features, I keep those close to my vest.

P.S. no need to return the read.

If you re-write this, let me know and I'll take another look.

Good Luck

Ghostie