The Promotion by Joon Chung - Short, Drama - A businessman's joy of a promotion is short lived as anonymous threats threaten to take everything away. 19 pages - pdf, format 8)

Quoted from logline A businessman's joy of a promotion is short lived as anonymous threats threaten to take everything away.

Ouch, a bit of an eyesore.

Joon - took a quick look at the script, unfortunately closed it rather early, here's why:

The beginning character introductions are all cramped together making it difficult to remember anyone in particular. I think it could work better if we were given 1 or 2 names per paragraph and gradually got to know all of them. Do we need to know all of their last names as well? Their descriptions are all thrown together into one paragraph as well and for most of the description I can't help but wonder whether the descriptions are necessary at all. There isn't much continuity and they're all very brief, for one, their clothes, for the other their hair or eye colour.

Business-like, very pretty and looks young for his age are the only ones I'd keep, given the latter two are important to the story or character. Hair colour is rarely relevant and isn't a good sign for producers, getting the cast will probably be difficult enough. Eye colour is one thing that will never be in a casting call as well unless the story is somehow centred around hypnotic blue eyes.

The conversation at the table sounds awkward, one moment they're having a toast and then incredibly abruptly they're all done eating. A lot of details about the people are also spanned out one after the other, it doesn't sit right.

The thinking out loud moment at page 4 is the final straw for me, sorry.

Hope this helps. If you're around the boards, leave a comment and if you're interested I can read further and post more feedback. Good luck.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm sure you can tell I haven't written many scripts before. More feedback would always be appreciated, but I'll definitely get to editing my script based on the feedback you've given me as soon as I can.

Ok - I finished the script, my further thoughts:

Dialogue is something you should heavily focus on in the next draft. Each character says exactly what's on their mind and what's necessary for the viewer to know with no signs of trying to hide it. There was barely any moment where I could believe an actual conversation was happening. You should also avoid "thinking out loud" moments, the way you use them is just telling the audience information you should be showing them instead.

I don't have a lot of positive things to say about the story either, really. It's a classic whodunnit that doesn't really stand out in any way. There is double tension with Ray being in danger while it's also unclear who the antagonist is, definitely something going on there. That tension is most present in the shooting range scene, but I feel that in that scene it doesn't work to its fullest potential. It's too safe of a place, there are bound to be security cameras, the signins recorded. Heh, maybe they could go hunting in some deep dark woods instead.

I think you should try and add some kind of an unique edge to the short for filmmakers to get interested, it's got to have something that makes it stand out. Talking about marketability, the final scene would cost way too much.

That said the story fell flat for me in its current shape not just because it doesn't have anything new to it, but because of the execution. The job itself doesn't look like it's anything important, very underplayed in the short, yet it's supposed to be worth killing someone over. I just don't buy it. I think we should see more of the job and what's so great about it.

Shannon mentions in the end that Jimmy was distraught over not getting the job and stressed for years working there, I didn't see any foreshadowing of it whatsoever. It's the most important piece of the Agatha Christie-esque summary and the motive technically so it won't work if it's not.

Along all of that, the script felt very convoluted. Feels like 17 pages isn't enough for the story, a short whodunnit is pretty difficult to pull off too imo. The twist itself isn't big enough to carry the short, maybe you should think of extending this into a feature? You could add more weight on the struggles being in a high-up management position while being young, the competition, the power etc.

Writing-wise things off the top of my head after the read:

1. Action lines could be more concise in some parts.
2. Repetition of things in action lines that were mentioned the line above or in slugs.
3. Action lines like "People have left the office for the weekend". How would they be visible on the screen?
4. If you have SAME then you won't need to repeat NIGHT in the slug again.

I see from your post history you've had 2 scripts up here that you've gotten feedback on the site now, you should give something back reading/reviewing others' scripts as well. Good luck.

Thanks for the feedback. I do agree that 17 pages may not be enough. I wrote this knowing I need to write a short for my class next semester so I decided to get a head start. I'll see whether I want to continue with this as a short or maybe go bigger and maybe start something else. Now that my finals are over, I finally have time to look over this script again and make edits.