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http://www.screenplayreaders.com is the fastest/cheaptest I have found...it's $79 for one read. They offer all sorts of other services but I do the cheapest....but the notes come back in like one to two days which is awesome if you are in a pinch.
Cheers for the info. Will probably give it a go when I'm done. Seems like a good price as well. Might even be able to afford either the 2 or 3 readers too, just to see how different they are.
Sounds like a rip off to me. To get a positive review when the author fully admits there are lots of things wrong doesn't bode well. Seems one could do just as well getting reads from here or using one's own good judgement.
Sounds like a rip off to me. To get a positive review when the author fully admits there are lots of things wrong doesn't bode well. Seems one could do just as well getting reads from here or using one's own good judgement.
I get that, it's just something I feel I need to experience. Plus it won't break my bank either, so I'm cool with it.
It sounds like you and I dealt with very similar issues on this challenge. I also had my protagonist running all around the greater New York area. My time span was 4 hours. Since I seem to have made it out the other side intact (wrote FADE OUT two nights ago and have been editing since), maybe one of the cheats I used could help.
1. Is your script strictly real time, or just awfully close? When I first hatched my idea, I was thinking strictly real time. As I thought my story beats out, I realized it would be impossible. I gave myself 10 hours, then pulled it back down to 4. From that point on, I was never really worried because if I finished my script and it turned out the events would take 5 or 6 hours to play out, I’d just go to my opening scene and replace the words, “you have four hours” with “you have five hours”. So when you say he has 5 minutes to get there… is there any way he could have 10 minutes instead?
2. Location Vagueness. If you’re using known places, people can call you out on travel times. If you use a vague location, you can make the travel time whatever you want. My vague locations include a gym, a hotel and a school. All I know about the gym and hotel is that they’re a few blocks from each other. The school is a 5-10 minute drive from the first train stop off the Williamsburg Bridge. Where exactly? Who cares? If this could apply to your example, maybe the Senator isn’t in his office. Maybe he’s at a restaurant. Maybe that restaurant is in Greenwich Village. Suddenly the travel time gets a lot shorter.
3. You’re probably already doing this but… keep your characters moving. In this scenario it’s not just for pacing, you’re accounting for travel time. A 5 minute scene with your protagonist talking plus a 10 minute drive time, equals 15 minutes. Having your protagonist talk while he’s driving brings it down to 10.
There are some other things, but it might be a little late in the game. For instance, I found having multiple characters helped rather than hurt, cause it allowed me to cut away every time my protagonist was doing something boring, like sitting in a cab. Of course, characters need more reason to exist than that. But perhaps you have a character that’s been underutilized?
If you do submit a “lesser” draft, I’d polish it up at least. Try to ensure that the notes you get are more about the story than the writing.
Anyway, Good luck with it. And to everyone else too.
Hey EWall,
1) It is real time, 90 minutes (length of the script is 90 pages) so the dude has 5 minutes to get to this location, as he's wearing a bomb vest that ticks down from 01:30:00, so every second counts. It takes place from 10:15pm - 01:00am (the first 5 minutes to get to the docks, a few minutes at the docks, vest begins at 10:30pm, giving him an hour and a half to get the job done. An hour of this can be subtracted for Petrovic wanting to talk to Swanson without the timer ticking.
2) Exactly the problem I encountered. With the Senator, he started at the airport, but from all reports, the airport in New York is an HOUR away from where we start, which poses as a problem, so I changed it to the office, a 3.3 mile distance in 5 minutes at night in Manhattan shouldn't be an issue. After that, the guy goes somewhere else and we meet the Protagonist, a detective en route to the laundromat who happens upon a dead hit-and-run victim at 10:33pm, 2 minutes BEFORE Swanson gets to the Senator at his office, so it takes place later in the script but earlier than a scene prior to the showdown. Newman is always one step behind, per se.
3) Always and constantly. Swanson never talks to anyone except Petrovic and when this happens, if it's something Petrovic wants to talk about, he stops the timer. If not and it's a call, the timer counts down still, and Swanson keeps driving.
4?) I have 3 primary characters. The antagonist is in the shadows for 80+ pages until he's finally revealed. Then I have the past/present colliding with one another. Newman and O'Connor (a detective and an FBI Agent) are tracking Swanson, who is going after random targets, such as PEOPLE and OBJECTS of interest. Then we have the past sequences, which move the plot along and reveal more about Petrovic's life before the events of the script in 1995. And we meet Emmett, Swanson's younger self, who is a cold and calculating assassin hired by a shadow organization to eliminate threats to their secretive plots, etc.
So in all, it's always moving and never stops and there's several key characters and plot threads to explore.
I've touched up the "lesser" version, removed typos, edited action scenes and given the dialogue some attention, so it's ready for review.
Yeah, real time can be tricky, especially when you open it up. Most of the real time movies I can think of were also contained movies taking place in pretty much one location. A few have even been shot in one continuous take.
Placing it at night is a good call that should save you some traffic. Mine takes place almost exclusively in the day, so I tried to save myself some traffic by getting out of Manhattan Between you and me, we should have a full Day/Night Tour of the city going on.
Sent mine in for a read to screenplay readers....got a consider on the vomit draft...now if I can just tweak the problems and work out the kinks before Friday!
I got a PASS and one CONSIDER. I just don't think I'll have time to work on it before Friday. It needs some major plot hole fixes. Not that I'm surprised.
Think there's a good story in there. Structure is there, got some good ticking clock action...but it's going to need a lot of tidying up.
I'm at around the same right now. Having to completely rewrite the last 40 pages or so. But that should mean all plot holes covered. One or two may be weak, but over all I should have a viable first draft by the deadline.
I got a PASS and one CONSIDER. I just don't think I'll have time to work on it before Friday. It needs some major plot hole fixes. Not that I'm surprised.
Well...a consider is good enough to know you got something worth working on I was happy with it...and I got holes too...gonna post mine anyhow...but it's probably out of the budget range ....but oh well...I'm still going to try to improve mine before shopping it though.
I'm at around the same right now. Having to completely rewrite the last 40 pages or so. But that should mean all plot holes covered. One or two may be weak, but over all I should have a viable first draft by the deadline.
I'm in the same boat, although my plotholes might still be wide enough that a semi could fall in.
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The 2014 One + 6 Week Challenge
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Between you and me, we should have a full Day/Night Tour of the city going on.
You rock!
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