No, I'm not a fan of the writing, either.  It's trying too hard and for me, it's far from effective.

I'm pretty tired of all the post apocalyptic world scripts and films, and I'm immediately not into this, sorry to say.

It's far from low budget, and it appears you have way more than 4 characters.

I started skimming early on and again, the style employed here ain't for me.

Congrats on entering.

Interesting approach. Religion vs nature.

What a powerful opening image... a volcanic sky of apocalyptic ash. Instantly sets the mood. This continues with the introduction of a preacher staring into a lagoon and distant chanting, I am loving this world already. It breathes.  It chokes. Hehhe. Then the body and the shark fin. You've established the tone in concrete within a 1/2 page. Great job setting this up.
Heavy. Dark.

Then we learn it's near present day. After a volcanic apocalypse destroyed civilization.  It felt like medieval times with a strange cult. For me this reveal of modern times was so shocking. Good job with that. The tradition of sacrifice is so primitive that you totally toyed with my expectations.

As I look at the whole picture, I can see you are leading me somewhere. I think you want me to think of how primitive religion is in itself.  Very interesting territory. Now I'm wondering how did the preacher fortify this religion and gain so much power over the surviving community.

The details may get too novelistic but I still enjoyed them. I'd consider trimming some descriptive passages, however. The details of the garden and guards stationed really helped develop backstory. Great way to show us they've been rebuilding humanity for a while now. I also liked when the preacher watches the shark attack and struggle with a smile on his face, entertained ancient Rome style. Creepy stuff.

When all is lost the flock turns to religion. I felt the preacher knew this and was manipulating the community with false hopes. He creeped me out. They have trial by fire called the ordeal. Interesting concept. I liked the dialogue,... through you our sins are devoured... it makes me think of the shift from sacrifice (animal, old testament style, idols) to self sacrifice (Jesus), which was meant to stop needless slaughter of children and animals. You bring up some interesting ideas and important commentary on what man needs to survive.

By the end nature (science) beats religion. Jones sacrifices himself to ensure the continuity of his genes. Survival of the fittest. I'm glad angel lived and hobbles off with her brother. It's even creepier, for me, that preacher believes the sacrifice is real. Whether it's to appease the volcano gods or something else. He believes sacrifices must be made for him to stay alive. Even creepier than an exploitative cult leader starving for power. All the sacrificed are his children. Metaphorically,  in his mind. Again just as creepy as if he actually sacrificed his real genetic daughter in the opening scene.

Great way to make us reexamine what we see. In his short and in life. You worked on a much larger scale, thematically,  than I expected with this challenge. Great job there.

Interesting commentary. Great intro. Great mood. Solid entry. Could amp up the action elements a little more.

I like the way this one starts out. Infact, it’s my favorite opening so far. The writing is clean and easy to read.

I actually cared about the characters in this(most of them). I was curious about what was going to happen to Angel from the minute she was introduced.

Jones...I didn’t like him after he talked about getting rid of Angel(which is a good thing). Knowing that something bad could happen, I found myself really rooting for Angel and Matthew.

I was sympathetic to Matthew, but wasn’t sure at the end of the script if maybe he lost his leg in the same manner that Angel lost hers. Overall though, this is a good read. One of my favorites.

Interesting start with a volcanic sky of apocalyptic ash but that would suggest the outside world was difficult to breath in and no-one seems to have that problem. A minor nitpick really.

“We’ll be as clever as mice in the kitchen.” – I love that line.

Unfortunately, as has already been pointed out, this cleverness relied on a mute girl suddenly speaking and volunteering herself to be sacrificed. I’d think of some other way of coercing Angel or not have her mute at all.

I loved the tension in the Lagoon, that is a very powerful and exciting scene.

The ending feels flat after such a wonderful build-up. She can swim after having her leg chewed off and the Preacher seems to have some way of healing her in the church we never see. They hobble off into the sunset at the end – I felt disappointed, but I think this is just because you ran out of time/pages though.

Very well written, another fine entry in a string of very fine OWC entries! I’ve been impressed and more than a little jealous by the quality and diversity of the scripts this week.

Mark

Hello.
The story is dialogue driven. The situation is only sparsely described with the setting, more than that the characters explain what's going on via dialogue...  6-7 complete I pages. They are just talking, no mimic no movement, nothing HAPPENS concerning pictures and impressions.

I'm at p 8. I guess the girl will try to arrive at the buoy because of the preacher's cult. The shark will kill her and an ironic witty pointedly ending should bring some style into the end. I'll see...

Ah, okay. The father did the job of being shark foot; and the ironic witty pointedly ending happened.

There's no conclusion. What do they eat now? Are they now part of preacher's cult religion, I guess not, in the end Jones has been killed.

The good "crew' characters" was a mixed package of different personalities, not bad. The preacher the weirdest character wasn't worth a line of visual description. Maybe you intended to let us decide how your cult preacher looks like, which is fine.

I miss the bite, the deepest possible ambition of exact your theme and stuff. It feels like it was written in a few hours. The easiest way to do it like that is drive everything by dialogue. And that was the choice here.
Your apocalyptical world could be interesting if you draw it out better, and think longer about your story; let them act in conflicts and not talk about conflicts.
The start was a positive opposite of that lack; the climax with everyone trying to give his life for the other too. The rest isn't interesting – "the way it is developed".

From a clever script about religious critic or a good post-apocalyptical theme I expect strenuous efforts or it will be average.

Sorry. The setting was nice. A bit of Mad Max flair.

24. The Ordeal - In a post-apocalyptic world, a sacrifice is called for so that others may live. Who will pay the price?
Brief - Post apocalyptic pseudo-religious crazies extort followers for food.

Characters to Animate/Voice - 4
Preacher, Jones, Matthew, Angel
Scenes to Build  - 4
Lagoon + shore, Coastal town, Fortress house EXT.
Accessory Visual - average
Skiff, buoy, fin, blood stained water, chain/clamp/leg, fire
Accessory Audio - average
Harbour waves, boat through water, chain pull,

Genre & Marketability - Fantasy drama
Script format - Fair
Comments  -  
     his once strong frame depleted from
malnourishment
Please don’t do that. I can’t plop a camera and film what a character’s body used to be, and I can’t create an animation of what something used to be. I can film and animate a malnourished man, so just say that alone.
     Turn off your program’s “Mores and Continueds” feature.
By the beginning of page three I can tell this is going to be super-drama =  not really interested. Hand halfway removing producer’s hat…
     Producer’s hat’s off when the story jumped the shark halfway down page seven when the baptism became “.... swim to a buoy in the middle of the harbor and return.”
     Honestly, this is a fairly good usage of three/four scenes. Talkies are good for the animation I do.
     Nice post-apocalyptic pseudo-religion insanity.
Final word - Pass. I just can’t do much with this genré, marketing wise.

10/15           Lo/Hi Estimated Build Hours per Screen Minute
x 11.8          Screenplay Pages
= 118/177     Total Build Hours Time Cost

Voting over, Monday morning, no reason not to out myself.

Thanks for the notes! I wasn't in love with this story either, I just wanted to participate. No plans to work any further on it.

For those interested, a quick story explanation:

Post-apocalyptic; a small cult has arisen around a shamanic preacher who worships a mother earth type god; she does in fact reward them with some supernatural power; she asks for an occasional human sacrifice in return; the shark serves the mother god in this process.

That notion is not as far fetched as it sounds. Hawaiians have a similar traditional religion where they use shamanic power to call on the sharks, which they venerate. They don't use sacrifice, but sacrifice is the most fundamental motifs in human religion. Obviously Christianity, but in most indigenous religions it exists in some form. The idea is that one of the members of the tribe is sacrificed in order to purge the tribe of its sin.

Here, I was trying to avoid showing the shark for reasons of cost. I probably should have used an arm bone at the beginning so that it would not be confusing when the girl loses a leg, not to mention the boy has already lost one(nothing to do with the shark).

The girl is not mute...she is shell shocked from the events that destroyed her world. So she doesn't talk yet. She showed up as a stray and has been with the father and son a couple weeks. The father knows they can't afford to give her the food.

The father works out a scheme with the preacher to give up the girl. In return they will get some food...and she will stop eating theirs. But the father does not want the boy to know. So he and the priest work out a scheme  where it will seem the girl volunteered. Could they know she would? No. And if she didn't, they would have tried some other angle.

The father changes his mind and tries to rescue the girl only because his son showed. He does feel a degree of guilt, of course. It was not an easy decision.

When the shark kills the father, of course the boy is horrified. He hides his face. Nothing he can do, though. No reason he doesn't still care for the girl making it ashore.

The priest helps them because the sacrifice is no longer needed. The father's blood satiated the goddess.

Not saying it was a good story, just explaining the attempt.

Word on the writing: everyone has seen a volcanic sky. Google it. At sunset, sometimes you get that orange sky with brilliant flashes of red streaks...that's called a volcanic sky.

If you saw that during the middle of the day, however,something would be wrong with the sky. But even then, you may have seen something close. It happens. A few years back, there were terrible forest fires in Canada that covered the high atmosphere over the Northeast with ash. This colored the sky a hazy orange.

So whatever apocalypse struck the world...volcanic, meteor, war...it filled the high atmosphere with something that blots the sun to a degree. I never thought that the term would cause confusion.

One reviewer said there were way more than 4 characters. There were precisely 4. We could hear chanting from the church, but that shouldn't count as characters. We never see them. That's just a soundtrack. And there's a moment when a rifle shows from the church. But we never see the character. I hardly think that counts.

Same reviewer said it would be expensive. Huh? This is one of the cheapest scripts in the OWC. You don't even have to rent the church...just find one to shoot outside of. The only thing that might require some work is setting up the house...but that's flexible. I mean if you really have no budget, just put a guy on the roof with a rifle. My thinking was to try to make it look like a house that people have been trying to protect for some time, so maybe they've built a barricade or two. That should not be expensive.

Even the killing of the father I tried to make cheap. We don't even really see the shark. It tips the boat, then eats the father in the water. Sometimes comments just baffle me.

As far as the story being dialogue driven...well, not exactly. The opening scene can be stretched to take a couple minutes, and the last scene would take up several minutes, the bulk of the film actually. There are 3 dialogue based scenes. They look longer because dialogue takes up more space in a script then action. Also, each of the 3 dialogue scenes has a good amount of conflict.

In the opening page, about half way down, I repeated a description of the sky. Some people called this "trying too hard". They didn't perceive what I was really trying: to avoid the slug MOMENTS LATER. Nothing wrong with that slug, but I thought it would benefit to replace it, and I'm not sure the film would be broken up.

See, it takes some time for the preacher to row out to the buoy. I can break up that time with a slug. I can maybe say he rows and rows and rows. Or I can assume the reader understands it takes time, and just try to use another line to stretch it out so that is represented some way in the script. Thus another description of the sky.

I appreciate the feedback from those that gave it honest read, which was most of the reviewers. Sorry it wasn't a better story...damn, this was a hard one! Thanks again everyone.

Personally, I thought this was impressive for a week's worth of work. We all have major kinks to work out. I think you started out creating atmosphere and story, but given another week you would have worked out your characters and dialog.

By the way, you get my vote for best reviewer this OWC. Really insightful reviews. Thank you.

Ah Kevin, you're the author. Wouldn't of guessed it. It's got a lot of potential, you're thinking about abandoning it? Thanks for the detailed response on it, that helped me understand some of the questions I had about the story. I'm still kind of curious if you might be able to elaborate more on the ending.

You should revisit this in some form later on down the road, without the restrictions. I thought the buoy was an intense way to present the theme.

Like Marnie, I was also impressed by your thoughtful and professional feedback regarding the entries. Very helpful to have you around. Learned a lot.

Thanks, John. At the end, the preacher uses the power his church receives from the goddess to heal the girl. When she is ready, they are free to leave. For some reason I had a ying and yang image in my head of two characters, male and female, each missing the opposite leg...suggesting that together they could be as one. Corny,didn't work.

I wanted her to swim as an ordeal, and originally thought of an island. I believe the natives on Easter Island have a similar ritual where they have to swim to a sacred island. I forget why I changed to a buoy. Probably just so a victim could be chained to it.

I won't be returning to it, I have too much else to do. I have several screenplays I want to write(features), but at the moment I am turning away from screen and to e-books instead. I've written about 10 features. Time to try something different. I'll still be here, though. Hey, this was the worst one of my OWCs ever did! I'm regressing!

Very impressive writing for one week, Kevin. Nicely done. Personally i've never been great with reviews so sorry for the weak one I gave you.

-Dirk

Hi Kev -

Quick review; not much, I'm afraid - partially due to time constraints, but also because there's not too much to say.  Very well done and smooth.  Great characterization here...  I definitely see your evolution as a writer over time with this script.  It's taken me a little time to adjust to the ending, but it works.  (Too many characters for the challenge, though!)  Otherwise, no complaints!  

Hey Janet. Thanks for digging into a relatively unpopular script!

There are only 4 characters. We don't see the people in the church, we just hear the chanting. I didn't think that counted as a character. It's just background noise.

I couldn't quite pull off the story. I wanted the idea of the sacrifice cult, and I began with the idea of the girl seemingly making safety, but then we look down and see she's lost a leg. Maybe it doesn't work, but I had in my head.

I also had the weird idea of the two survivors walking off, each missing a leg, symbolic of their forming a ying and yang bond as one. Cookoo, I know. And I was sober!

Been a while since I wrote a short, had fun!