Quoted Text EXT. FOREST, CLEARING - DAY Just after sunrise. A cloudless morning allows the winter sun passage to the hard ground below. If it weren’t for the sunlight peeking through the trees, the temperature would be well below zero. The cold wind whips through the canopy of leafless branches. An old CAMERA PHONE - the kind that stays charged for days - hangs suspended from the tree. Its red light blinks indicating it’s recording. |
Quoted Text A German Shepard, ROSIE sleeps comfortably on floor. She’s on her back with all fours in the air. |
Quoted Text No good. She after something. Her instincts more than his voice commands. He hustles after her leaving the water containers. |
Quoted Text PG 37. WOMAN Should we leave. |
Quoted Text Up ahead, she lays in the leaves with a small, presumably dead, animal beneath her paw. |
Quoted Text The Woman, dressed in clean women’s clothes, tends to slices of Spam frying in a pan. She’s much more domesticated cleaned up |
Quoted Text WOMAN (CONT’D) Fuck you. Want like that. |
Quoted Text I don’t think you need the music in the opening. Doesn’t really add anything and many won’t even know what song it is (I had to Google it and the last thing you want a reader to do when opening is not understand a reference). By the time I got to the end of the script I realized you were using the music as a bookend (Music in the beginning and music at the end). But at the end you simply call it The SOMBER PIANO MUSIC. So, if you going to keep it, just use SOMBER PIANO MUSIC in the opening. But better yet, bookend with something we can see rather than hear – e.g., lightning from gray skies, trees rustling from an upcoming storm, etc. etc. |
Quoted Text Your opening setting is a bit overwritten |
Quoted Text Okay – now I’m deep enough in to know that you are not going to give you MAN and WOMAN characters names. I kind of get what you’re trying to accomplish here but I think it’s a mistake. Reading “THE MAN” or “THE WOMAN” (a) gets tedious after a few pages and (b) in my opinion makes them less relatable. Our brains are wired to know main characters by names – they seem more distant when they are just generic. Anyway – I’d name them. |
Quoted Text Quoted Text WOMAN (CONT’D) Fuck you. Want like that. I didn’t understand the above dialogue. Is something missing? |
Quoted Text Okay – I’m on page 63 and this is where I get lost. The Woman hits the man with the rock causing his fall. Why??? She had been so protective up to that point. If it were her intent to kill him there were so many other opportunities earlier. It comes out of the blue and didn’t make sense to me. |
Quoted Text And as he is laying near death on the ground (due to her) she’s asking him if he’s alright? Like she’s concerned for his well being – which is odd just after whacking him with the rock. Then she spends a moment trying to get down to him and then – screw it – she’s off back to the cabin. I got truly got lost here. The thread of the story evaporated for me. |
Quoted Text The INFECTIONS – i.e., the one that killed the dog and that the man was so afraid of - They ultimately played no part nor were ever really explained – unless I missed it. It’s kind of a promise of the premise thing – I thought that someone given their prominence early that the infections (e.g., the source of them, the struggle for a cure, etc.) would play a big part in the story. At the end – they just fizzle away as a plot point and the story really doesn’t change much whether they existed or not. |
Quoted Text And - yes - I do know there are several scenes where we flash back to men with HAZ-MAT suits - but I could not quite connect their role to the general premise - some kind of infection has ravished the land and some folks are doing some kind of weird experiment (ala the Truman Show) with the man and the woman - I just got lost to the why and what - i.e., the infection is...? and the reason they are doing it is...? Hope that makes sense. |
Quoted Text The gist is, "the government" has resorted to using citizens for human experiments without their knowledge. Mainly to see how people would react when placed in stressful environments. Would they resort to killing? Other devious means to survive? |
Quoted from SAC Dave is a master at giving great notes. Me, on the other hand, I basically give a thumbs up or down. There wasn't much I disliked about this script. I thought the pace was good, the writing was good, the suspense and the feeling of dread lurking through it. I was waiting for the big reveal, and it came, although with the asterisks that Dave provided. I get that it was the government, but as pointed out, the WHY is a big question that should be answered in order to gain some closure with all of this. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a bad thing the government is doing. It could be a good thing with a good reason. It's up to you. Steve |
Quoted Text I do think your close - just a few scenes away. But the gist is this: Your title is the Experiment. What is clear in the script is the "What." What is not as clear as the Why and Who. In your mind, you already know the answer: i.e., |
Quoted Text I thought the pace was good, the writing was good, the suspense and the feeling of dread lurking through it. I was waiting for the big reveal, and it came, although with the asterisks that Dave provided. |
Quoted Text the WHY is a big question that should be answered in order to gain some closure with all of this. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a bad thing the government is doing. It could be a good thing with a good reason. |
Quoted Text Ooh - I like the good thing for a good reason twist. |
Quoted Text Overall the first half kept me invested though I didn�t feel it was paid off by the second. I wonder if part of the issue is the underlying concept (the experiment) needs to be more developed? |
Quoted Text To me that feels vague and I wonder if not having a clear motive/goal as it were makes it harder to focus the plot? |
Quoted Text I really like the idea of essentially hitting reset at the end and starting over. That should have been the big reveal that forced me to reassess preceding events through the lens of the experiment, but for some reason it just felt flat. |
Quoted Text I like how you set-up the Man�s character and the ever-present danger via Rosie (why does the dog get a name yet no-one else?). Throw in the Woman�s arrival and you have a dynamic between these two survivors as they try to figure one another out. All the while there�s the question of what led to this cataclysmic event and a growing mystery behind what these characters want and how it affects the other. The story builds and I want to know where it�s going. That�s fundamentally all good stuff. |
Quoted Text your characters don�t seem engaged in finding answers. |
Quoted Text There�s a lot of talk about staying vs leaving with the Man determined to wait for his family�right until he isn�t. |
Quoted Text To be fair, how does he not see the 15ft wall from the mountainous peak? Isn�t this wall surrounding them? |
Quoted Text Were his family ever real? The Woman too mentions a daughter but seems to accept there�s no chance to see her again. |
Quoted Text That�s quite a heavy backstory for each but how does our emotional connection to these characters pay off with the suggestion that none of this was real anyway? |
Quoted Text �Something waiting for us to make a mistake� - on first read I liked this line, but then I didn�t see how it connected to what had come before. What has happened to her before now that makes her feel this way? Is it true? Would they (�the government�) not be indifferent�just watching the experiment unfold? |
Quoted Text Hope this helps in some way and apologies if I�ve misunderstood your intent with this. |
Quoted Text but you�re trying to tie a lot of elements into one idea. |
Quoted Text One thought - would this be better suited to a shorter format? |