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* * * * This is the submission I would most likely pursue production of. * * * *
One of God's Special Children by - Hurricane Wilma battered the Florida Keys in October, 2005. On a lonely Key, a young woman must make a decision that could affect the entire world. Brief - Polar entities plea to a young woman to choose a path for her unholy unborn child.
Locations & Sets - Exterior, motel @ night. Interior, motel office @ night. Actors - KIMMIE MAY (24), LEW (35), MICHAEL (60), Costumes - Lew’s nice outfit, beach bum outfit Props - under clothes term pregnancy prosthesis, cell phone, radio, cross on necklace, pint of small mm diameter pearlized beads, shoulder length hair wig, headstone Audio FX - newscaster over radio V.O., Visual FX - lightning flash, dancing fire in Lew’s eyes, floating bead, flash of electricity effect Other - nighttime rain effects across office window, public domain music, shop fan, headstone apparition Genre & Marketability - supernatural drama Comments - Don’t include copyrighted music in your micro-budget short. I’ve seen others take issue with the dialects; I don’t. They convey the demeanors of the characters and will likely be free-styled on set anyway to something... close enough to get the story’s points across. It’s fine. In fact, reference the dialog in another entry “House” as evidence that people of different cultures speak different than whitey-crackers, such as myself. Turn off your screenplay software’s mores and continueds feature. The CGI effects for the beads to headstone is just going to be not worth the effort - ditch it. Excellent use of mostly one location. Excellent story and dialog. I very much like this. Script format: fine (just turn off... yeah. that). Final word: this story is definitely worth producing.
$1,000 - $2,000 Lo/Hi Estimated Budget Range / 9.1 Screenplay Pages = $ Estimated Cost Per Screen Minute
Adherence to Given Criteria: Odd but interesting character(s) - yep take refuge from a hurricane - eh, not really in a beat-up motel - yep and are forced to make a choice - yep, for Kimmie May between good or evil - yep in order to survive the night. - not really Each character must - have some history involving a supernatural event in their lives - yep that factors into their choice. - yep Genre is open. - supernatural drama This is a micro-budget short, - yep so no destruction of the motel, - yep no children or animals - yep and minimal special effects. - yep BONUS! Story also included: mime(s) - nope dinosaur(s) - nope
Kimmie May's dialogue actually began to bother me on page 2. I know that some people out there talk like this, but it would be distracting in real life just as it is distracting in the script. Not to mention I think it is way overdone at times... "Bigger than you ever did sees me."
I've lived in the south and I don't remember anyone talking like that.
The problem with telling me Lew looks like Denzel in his heyday is that I now picture Denzel playing the part. I'm not saying Denzel doesn't fit the part, but you're definitely not getting Denzel to do this movie and I am likely to be disappointed.
In the end, I just didn't see Kimmie having to make a decision. Lew just disappeared after she was shown the headstone. I guess you can argue that it was made in her head, but she didn't say anything. Michael just ended up taking her.
I morphed the story into an animation because Lew started to remind me of the bad guy from The Princess and the Frog.
The writing was clear and I really like how Kimmie becomes a Christ-like saviour when she sacrifices herself to make sure Satan's child isn't born, but in the end the way it played out didn't work for me.
I'm not sure the visual effects with the water would be very cheap to make either, so I'm not sure how Raw made his calculations. And just the purchase of the rights to those two songs would already blow the budget he guesstimated, so I'll disagree with him there.
You're a very good writer, though. This was by no means a bad entry. There were just things that turned me off from it. Definitely things that can be fixed.
As some have mentioned, I couldn't tell if you were going for a comedy or a religious story. It might help if you lean more one way or the other.
Congrats on finishing!
'Artist' is not a term you should use to refer to yourself. Let others, and your work, do it for you.
Very strong writing, especially for an OWC. The author possibly gives himself away to SS regulars with "shockingly" and "for reals", but you'd have to be a regular here to recognize it.
It's very good work, and I can only think of two areas where it might be strengthened.
First, we don't get much of a sense of Kimmie Mae. She's black and grew up poor, we get that from her dialogue. But beyond that we don't get much sense of her. Admittedly, that's hard to do in a short. But the drama here is built entirely around her choice, which is good. That's where the stakes are. If we have a better sense of Kimmie, it will make those stakes more pronounced.
The writer might be constrained by the crazy number of parameters in this OWC. Every time I try to think of ways to show Kimmie's character through some small action, I feel the need to bring in more characters. And yet they would all have to have a supernatural history I suppose?
The only other thing I can think to make us feel more for Kimmie is to show her desperate to survive, desperate for her baby to survive. Again, hard in a short. But if it could somehow be done where we saw her in danger from the storm, and taking strong action to survive, she will gain our sympathy more, so when the time comes to choose, we will ourselves be emotionally invested in the choice. Just an idea.
The second thing I would consider improving is the time of choosing. The choice is good: go to Satan and live with your child beyond the reach of poverty; or go to God but die with your child.
It's a difficult choice for her. That's why Lew is handsome and cool, and Michael looks like a bum. All well done to make the choice hard. How will she choose?
And then she decides based on some drawing in the air created by Michael, of her tombstone. That's weak. I think the writer was up against the deadline and that's all he had time to come up with. If this is rewritten so that something else influences the choice, it will work very, very well.
For example, maybe Michael shows a vision of what her son will become, a minion of Satan. Maybe she sees her son will be just like Lew, and now that she sees Lew for what he is, she chooses God's side.
It's excellent OWC work, could be improved on rewrite.
Some fun stuff here. It took me a while to grasp the playful nature of it, actually. But by the end I liked it. It did remind of a skit on the antagonists we find in the TV show 'Supernatural' (as well as the soft rock Scorpion nod) but that fits the challenge nicely.
There's a lot of 'motherfuckin' swearing going on from the Angel and Demon, and I think that when proofreading cutting back on that is nearly as important sorting out typos and clunky action description, but I know first draft and rushing for deadline can hinder that. Good work all in all, though.
Overall, this was very well written. However, I didn't always like what I was reading. I grew tired of Kimmie May's voice, so maybe she was talking too much early on. The accent wore me down as the pages turned.
The concept I enjoyed. Having the two male characters come to her at this desperate time gave some sense of urgency. By the same token, it didn't feel as urgent as it could have. I guess Kimmie May is stranded in this hotel, with the main road out of town closed, but the way she was talking on the cell phone seemed too casual. I wondered who she was talking to...
And the woman's voice on the radio seemed calmer than I'd like. Strange, but it made me think of Tokyo Rose.
Kimmie says she "broke water," so I wanted more concern. How about opening the story in a motel room, with the baby on its way. I wanted to feel she was abandoned. Maybe the radio goes dead and she loses her phone connection. This would heighten the conflict of her choice.
When Lew and Michael come to Kimmie, I preferred that their identities be more ambiguous. That it is was Kimmie who proactively identified the good from the evil.
I would dispense with the F bombs. They were so jarring. The final decision, I think, would be more enticing if neither man gave away so much information. Let Kimmie's faith guide her to ask the right questions and see the clues as to who she would trust.
But, on such a tight deadline, there is just so much that could be accomplished. Kudos for a nice story that while isn't my favorite, is at the top of my list. Well done.
When I first read this I stopped early on, I found the dialogue unnatural and over the top, but reading this again as more of a colourful cartoony comedy I got on much better.
Haven't got a lot to add. Wouldn't Kimmie May have recognised Lew if he was the father of her child.
Other than that, this was really good, one of the top ones. I think so far I have only found 'The ledger' and this script immersive enough to forget I was even reading a script.
I haven't really had a chance to read many scripts due to a very heavy work load this past week, but I saw this one rising to the top and figured to give it a readsy...
It was worth the time. A very quick, clean read.
Like several other's mentioned, Kimmie dragged on my a bit after a while but a great effort for an OWC none the less.
I'm with RAYW when he gave his endorsement. I could see this one being made as well.
Page 1. Usually people around here referred to that road as either A1A or US1. I could be wrong, but I don't think I have ever heard anyone call it 1A.
I am assuming that this must be a comedy because Kimmy sounds really stupid. If they are evacuating the keys and she is still very sitting in an attempt the motel that is pretty stupid on its own, but she also says, I think I already broke water. She doesn't know?
I am on page 4, right about now I am getting a little annoyed with Kimmie's dialogue. It doesn't quite sound like southern black people if you know what I mean…
Page 6. Nice work in making Kimmie making the decision who to go with.
Page 8. I can't help but picturing Samuel L Jackson as Lew.
I like how those shimmering beads came together to form a flat screen.
Just finished your script. I also took a quick peek at some of the previous comments and I seem to be alone in not loving this script. Even though you did have this take place at a motel and you had the supernatural part and the choice between good and evil, it still fell short in my opinion. And why did this have to take place in 2005? Lew was my favorite of the characters and I like his dialogue a lot more than I did Kimmie's. If this was a film, I think it would plate out more like a skit rather than a story. Although I did like the shimmering beads and Lew's little jigs, there really wasn't much of interest here visually. If this is your script Stevie, I'm sorry I wasn't "blown away" by it, but I hope you appreciate my honesty.
There was something very distinctive about the very first page that made me guess who the writer was lol… but regardless, this was easily one of my favorites.
I found Kimmie May to be very likeable. I could picture her delivering her dialogue with her strong accent and I constantly just smiled when I read her lines. I was enthralled by her character.
Thought your descriptions were great – bulbous stomach, eyes look like saucers, etc.
I found Lew’s insane tap dancing such an odd thing to throw in but it worked and I’d imagine people would find this either distracting or a hilarious trait – I found it the latter with a touch of haunting, especially since I’m picturing it with his long fingers and such.
I liked Kimmie May’s moral decision she faced and how she was torn between her faith but there were a few lines that seemed repetitive. But, it’s all good.
Overall, I had fun with this. Easy, entertaining, smooth read. Definitely recommended to those who haven’t checked it out yet.
This one just fell flat for me. Maybe I'm suffering from OWC burnout now; I'm not sure.
I found Kimmie's character to be a little stereotypical, Lew's as well. Throw Michael in the mix and you have three flat characters that I lost interest in a while ago. They weren't really developed. And if the reader doesn't care about the character, he doesn't care what happenes to the character.
The ending seemed very anti-climactic. She makes her decision and everyone agrees to it. Lew should've made one last desperate show of bravado.
There was a formatting problem on page five:
Quoted Text
KIMMIE (on phone) OH...MY...GOD... (beat) You said you'd call, you two timin' charlatan! You leave me knocked up in this God forsaken Hell hole for nine months and think you can just waltz your damn fine ass in here, do a quick tap dance and have me runnin' into your arms? (beat) For reals?
I don't think that you fully understand how to use (beat) in dialog. It's meant to show pause before a character speaks. If you need to show pause in the middle of dialog, you should use the ellipses (...) to show the pauses. I'm not sure how you meant to use them when Kimmie said 'Oh...My...God.'
I don't think that you fully understand how to use (beat) in dialog. It's meant to show pause before a character speaks. If you need to show pause in the middle of dialog, you should use the ellipses (...) to show the pauses. I'm not sure how you meant to use them when Kimmie said 'Oh...My...God.'Phil
Phil, I'm going to have to disagree with your comments above...and I know we've had such conversations before.
The ellipses in dialogue shows a slight pause in speech, as if one is fumbling for the correct thing to say, or thinking mid sentence, how to continue. It can also be used (as in your example above) to "exaggerate" what's being said, by slowing down the delivery of the phrase or words.
The beat shows more than just a pause and is used in one way phone conversations, where the character onscreen is listening, but we're not hearing what's being said.
I think this discussion actually came up in a past OWC, where you incorrectly used beats in dialogue before your characters spoke, which makes zero sense.
Not wanting to have a go with you, but i have to speak up when I see something like this.
It doesn't make much sense to me having a (beat) before the dialogue even starts. If the character is going to take a beat before speaking, it should be done in the action line. IMO
'Artist' is not a term you should use to refer to yourself. Let others, and your work, do it for you.
It doesn't make much sense to me having a (beat) before the dialogue even starts. If the character is going to take a beat before speaking, it should be done in the action line. IMO
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One of God's Special Children - 10/12 OWC
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