Hey Lee:
Congratulations on finishing an adaption. Must have been interesting to write, especially turning it into a pilot instead of a complete story. I've meant to read this in its entirety for a while, but haven't quite had the chance. Almost a month since you submitted, but here goes, all my thoughts completely subjective.
The opening reads confusingly and it took me some time to understand the timeline. Both of the year supers start off on very brief scenes and the title card pops up at a strange spot before the next Int. on the scene that was already established as 2011. I believe this part could do with more clarity.
Quoted Text INT. EDAY - ABANDONED WORLD WAR II AIR-RAID SHELTER
SUPER: 2003.
BLACK SCREEN.
STRAINED HEAVY BREATHING.
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I'm also confused here. Does it cut to black or is it always been black? There's a match lit slightly afterwards, but then it's more so darkness than a black screen. There's no description of the abandoned world war shelter so maybe it's been black all along? I don't know.
Very brief one-word character descriptions on only a selective amount of people, looks weird. Not sure why you decided to bring out handsome for Andrew. I get the scottish, but the handsome looks strange in contrast to the lack of character description on others. I was also confused on who the eccentric and hippy character description belonged to at first considering how huddled up it all was at first. Looks like the first pages need some organizing so far.
P5: I like the Scottish feel to it all so far, especially how you've incorporated the accent into the dialogue. This scene however, feels both melodramatic and something I've seen tens of times before with the exact setup and even almost exactly the same dialogue as this:
Quoted Text ANGUS Why haven't the police found them yet? Fur Christ sakes. DAVID They're doing their best, Angus. We need to be patient.
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P17: Missed ballet show, the usual you're not home enough because of work and this is the last chance with an important situation happening soon. Feels familiar with not much of a new angle to make it interesting.
P22: ANDREW
Amy. Don't swear. Just because I'm
not at home doesn't mean you can be
a foul mouth.
Really? She said pissed off and she's 14. Foul mouth? Sounds kind of weird to me.
P26:
Quoted Text EXT. WHITFIELD HOUSE
Tom approaches, holding a paper bag from the bakery.
TOM Cheese and tomato, OK?
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Who's he telling this to?
P32: Mrs Fishwick's attitude seems to have taken a quick 360. I noticed this already happening at the door when she gave in very quickly.
P36: The radio/TV analogy is pretty fascinating. Most interesting dialogue part so far.
P41: Wasn't the boy just sick and the last scene was about him not going with the father? Have I missed something?
I liked the ending montage, however wasn't sure why the detectives were bagging the girl's stuff up only now. I'd say that would be something for the uniform officers to do and it would be done earlier.
Overall: The supernatural angle is interesting, but I think there are no interesting characters that could carry the story. The only one I found really interesting was McEwen and he was in it for very little time. The cat lady was okay too, but the part I brought out above made her dialogue/stances somewhat contradictory to me. The main characters in here were definitely meant to be Louise and Andrew.
Louise was an annoying character imo. She was either whining about something or being the perfect parent with really patronizing dialogue, especially towards Callum.
Andrew had the sense that he could be interesting, especially so when he was explaining the radio/tv analogy, but so much time of the script was wasted to his family problems. Those family problems were uninteresting and brought out in a way that had been done a thousand times before. There was even the cliche missed ballet bit.
The dialogue feels wooden and as if everything happened in a very formal setting at all times. I for one didn't sense too much character in it. It was also quite expositionary at times:
A few examples:
Quoted Text JESSICA I'm serious Andrew. It's Mummy and Daddy's silver wedding anniversary. We've got to be at the Crown Hotel for their party at seven pm.
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They'd both be aware of this already. You could turn this around with Andrew forgetting what time it was and Jess having to blurt it out because of that.
Quoted Text LOUISE I find it so hard sleeping now since Jack left.
EMILY You poor thing. How is Callum coping with the separation?
LOUISE He seems fine. Jack comes to get him every Friday, he wishes he could see him more but...
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And this piece of information that they'd definitely already know:
Quoted Text We are here to film a documentary about paranormal sightings. This building in fact used to be an old prison hospital for over seven thousand French prisoners of the Napoleonic wars. It is said that a nurse carrying a lantern roams up and down the lane and haunts this house. |
You used a camrecorder for the information drop later on and it worked much better. Why not do that here, too?
I also noticed that the three stories and the two timelines didn't tie together apart from a really quick shot of Callum dreaming about the eday. I think that the pilot needs more, a more clear tie-in so people could understand why they're watching these two seperate timelines and three parts of the story playing out. The ending is Tom finding out that something is wrong in 2011 and in 2003, the audience finds out something is definitely up while Louise thinks that there might not be. Not bad, but one thing did bug me about Louise/Callum. The script seemed to want to avoid the question: "What the hell is this other daddy you're talking of?" and the way it was avoided didn't seem natural.
In my opinion the script focused too much on personal drama instead of establishing the main storyline. I'd recommend focusing more on the storyline, the kidnapping of the girls, the supernatural angle and give a lot less screentime to all the personal stuff, especially on Andrew's side. It was the boringest part and it didn't have anything unique around it that screams "This needs to be made." The supernatural angle did and while the handling of the kidnapping also may have not had too much unique to it, it was just so much more interesting. You could show that press conference taking place for example.
The dialogue and its characteristics for each character need spicing up, too.
Hope you can get something out of this, see what you agree with. Good luck!