Nationwide Best Seller by Found Footage - Short, Drama - A group on Hazmat employees stumble on the last days in a library. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Okay, so...

Logline needs tidying up as it reads awkwardly.

The formatting of the headers is off, e.f. first should be EXT. DOWNTOWN LA STREET - DAY

Also characters should be given ages, and brief descriptoins, just helps the reader visualise

I suspect a newer writer so will concetrate on story, though formatting, spelling and grammar are all important.

So one hazmat suited team find the footage of the news team who were also in hazmat, who went to a library and saw that one of the dead peeps was reading a post-apocalyptic novel.

I think this needs more meat, e.g. what killed the news crew, what are the hazmat suits for (the news crew change into them in a non-sterile environment) and does the CD have relevance? News crews/cameras don't really use them as media.

Also, this is only 2 pages, needs at least one more to hit the criteria.

Well done for getting one in.

Interesting little tale here - Quite nicely written.

Had to look up 'On the beach' to get the gag at the end.

Don't see this one as a 'found footage' screenplay at all really. The vast majority of it takes place in conventional narrative, but still, a nice little story nevertheless.

Good luck.

Well, this is a found footage story in a larger story about what happened, with a clever ending.
However, I am confused about a few details.

For example: Sheila, Brad & Mary are safe in their haz mat suits, but somehow Janice, Derek and Charlie died in theirs!? What did they do wrong, what chances did they take, or how did their suits fail them...and what if Sheila, Brad & Mary are in the same danger but don't know it?

As plotted, the whole story is to tee up the irony of the dead people in the library, who are approaching the end of the world,  are reading a story about the end of the world. (Could have been a Twilight Zone story idea.)

I think if the writer took advantage of the the full 6 pages to craft the story we could have had a better chance of relating to the three who perished and gotten a greater sense of a wider story.  

Why not take the time after the Challenge and build out the story as long as you wish? No limit then to the page count.  Good luck!

This script is disqualified as it is only two pages. The requirement specified 3-6. That aside, not a lot happens. Lots of dialogue for two pages. This seems like it was rushed in last minute. Maybe it's going somewhere, the story, that is but it needs much more.

A few notes as I go:

• Page 1.  I wish I knew the ages of the people in the hazmat suits just to know what kind of person to expect.
  
• Page 1.  I don't really see how this is shot in "found footage" style until they play the CD in the news van.
  
• Page 2.  You could lose the EXT. CITY  LIBRARY DOWNTOWN L.A. shot. You've already established that there are dead people everywhere. Just start with the next shot where they're in the library. You misspelled DOWNTOWN by the way. (LOWNTOWN)
  
• Page 2.  It ended a bit abruptly and it's only 2 pages... hmmmm... perhaps the clock got you.
  

This seemed to be part of a larger story but you must have run out of time.
There are some format errors that took me out of the story, the dialogue was on the nose, 6 characters for 2 pages seems excessive, and it didn't really go anywhere.

Thanks for the read, but this wasn't for me.

-Jordan

Ahoy writer,

Um, I like the idea behind this, but you short-changed yourself. I feel it can be fleshed out more. Best of Irish luck! -A

Nice set up but I felt a little duped cause I wanted more!

On the Beach was written by British author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. Seen the film a couple of times - I keep hoping for a different ending. So grim.

Is this meant to be like The Ring? You watch/read, you die?
I didn't get the reference or connection to how they died except I presume there's been some kind of fallout.

What you wrote and your set up had some nice atmosphere but, it needed to go further
I think, as sometimes happens, a lot of the story just didn't make it to the page, or you ran out of time, or both.

I'm curious as to what caused all the deaths. Definitely needs a few more pages to flesh out the story. There really isn't a whole lot happening here.

- Were the team's search and rescue or just the news crew?

- Did the teams know one another? They seemed to B-line right for the news van as if they knew what or who was in there but had little to no reaction to seeing the bodies.



Good job for getting one in!

Sorry, but this one is pretty rough around the edges. I reread it a couple of times and I still don't under what's happening, what I'm supposed to be seeing, or what the significance of the ending means.

I'll be curious to hear what the writer has to say, after the names are revealed.

Good effort.

A page short and one character with no introduction. What else could go wrong?
Every other reader made solid points.
Maybe the news crew didn't wear Hazmat suits.
Then you don't have to explain why the suits didn't save the crew.

Anyway, whatever killed everybody had to be unnoticeable. If you have college kids
in the library when they died, they couldn't have seen death coming.
Otherwise, they would be at Santa Monica beach where life happens, not ends.

At two pages, you didn't give yourself a lot of space to tell this story.
It's a skeleton script with dead bodies and an unknown death agent.
But, it's not bad at all. It's promising. It's crazy LA. Yeah, I can see this working
with an upgrade. Keep it going and repost.

Hi writer,

OK, I see what you did there. However, this dystopian narrative here details the aftermath of a contamination/pandemic - or was it nuclear fallout…? Ok, that makes sense re: On the Beach, but I had to Goog that snippet.

Anyway, writing’s good, probably not your first ro-DAY-o. The CD laying/lying about was a little too convenient to push the story into the OWC theme, but meh,  at only 3 pages we’re dealing with limited page real estate to get to the punchline.

Not bad, but with 3 more pages to flesh out a little more backstory this feels more like a piece of something bigger IMO. Best of luck.