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I tried reading and then I read the feedback..... So not to cover too much that's already been wrote... but waaaayyyy over written especially for a short and of course the lack of hurricane and possible storyline didn't help
My guess is that you're pretty new to screenwriting.
This was a very slow read. Too many details. You need to condense what you're writing and leave out descriptions of what isn't essential to the story.
And your dialogue is the same. You say way too much with your dialogue which gives pretty much the entire script an on the nose feel. Condense that too. Leave out things you can expect an intelligent reader to deduce.
I think you have too many characters as well. Why couldn't it be one other person that Benny has to let them have - an important person. This way you can rely on one strong relationship to tell that part of the story rather than several weaker relationships. So condense your characters as well.
The problem I have with the men in white is that they come off as some sort of morality police. That made them of this world rather than spiritual for me. I'm not certain how you might want to fix that but that aspect did not work for me. Needless to say I didn't like the ending.
Good on ya for getting a script together for the OWC.
Page 1. Quite wordy introduction. Also, why haven't Daniel only had his 1st name but the woman have the last name as well as the 1st name? Or did you just think that Misty Dawn sounded cool?
Is it imported to the story that her earrings are on the nightstand? The only reason I am asking is because you have a lot of descriptions that in my opinion are not necessary and just slows down the read.
By the way, where is the hurricane?
Page 2. So, Benny wears a black Confederate T-shirt, we'll see how that plays into this story. I'm assuming you want us to think he's a racist southern redneck or something.
Page 3. You were doing fine, but on this page thing seems to be getting stupid. We have a dead body on the bed and we also have Ernest with blood and sores on him and then Misty says " are they okay though?". Really?
Page 4. Ernest don't seem too upset about their friend being dead does he.
I am wondering if there is a reason that the woman has to be so old. Might be hard to find an actress that age…
I am on page 8 and right now I'm thinking there's a lot of stupid stuff going on here and why are they always going back and forth to the outside until somebody says " we should go back" and where's the hurricane???
I have to be honest, this story didn't really grab me. My mind started wandering around page 4 or so. If I was the producer looking for scripts with the criteria for this OWC your script would not be considered, I'm sorry to say. One of the reason would be completely omitting the hurricane. It was also a confusing story and none of the characters really spoke to me. They said and did dumb things all the time. I'm sorry.
I had a hard time reading this script. You didn't keep my attention and I actually fell asleep trying to finish it. The good news...I had a very nice dream about being on an island of milfs...
Who were the people in white? People who murder fornicators by giving them extreme acne?
Where was the hurricane? The only person who got wet was Misti.
Room 3 by - A couple having an affair spend the night in a secluded motel and become involved in the affairs of other guests who are battling their own demons and demons from beyond. Brief - It’s like... the SNL Coneheads, dressed in white, have come to Earth to collect a debt from some rednecks, get stiffed, afflict the rednecks with giant pus pockets, go hide in the bushes, then come back and kill them with a touch, while two idiots go searching around outside for them, and... IDK. Fuck me. That’s just crazy.
Locations & Sets - Exterior, motel @ night. Interior, motel room @night. Exterior, motel grounds @ night Actors - A MAN IN WHITE (53) and two women, DANIEL (34), MISTI DAWN (30), BENNY (49), ERNEST (43), ADDIE (89) Costumes - White suit, white dress x2, hoodie and sweats, dress shirt + pants + dress shoes Props - low wattage bulb, mens wedding band, bar fly tramp accoutrements, black Confederate flag T-shirt for ruin, liquid stage blood, beer cans, hard liquor bottles, syringes, a myriad of food wrapper clutter, multiple large puss blister prosthetics, puss ooze, large caliber pistol, beer, cigarette + lighter, cellphone Audio FX - muffled crashes + inhuman screams Visual FX - Other - smoke/fog machine + juice, makeup artist Genre & Marketability - Supernatural scifi suspense drama Comments - “A series of inhuman CRASHES and SCREAMS...” Really?! Inhuman crashes?! How about instead “A series of CRASHES and inhuman SCREAMS”. More betterer. Will try to make one booked room look like both room 3 & 6 to save budget expense. Going to be kinda hard to see blood and sweat on a black Confederate flag T-shirt at night, juno? Set design is starting to drift off budget with room 3. You’ve pretty much killed the budget with casting. MISTI Let’s hope we don’t miss! “Weeeee” will not be firing a single pistol, beyotch! Some of the dialog is on the nose pugilistic painful to read. By pg8 and Benny and Daniel are having a confab out on the motel grounds in the dark I’m wondering if there’s even a hurricane at all in this story. Pg9: Misti explodes. In tears, right? Please be right. Please, please, please... Pg9: The man, without emotion or hesitation, turns away from the baby and starts for the door. What?! What “baby”? Did I miss something here? WTF... ?! Alright, I’m stopping at pg 10. Script format: needs work. Final word: Story’s just unusably weird.
$ - $ Lo/Hi Estimated Budget Range - Doesn’t even fucking matter / Screenplay Pages Who cares = $ Estimated Cost Per Screen Minute Pickle, chicken, 3, abacus, Zeus!!! Whatever.
Adherence to Given Criteria: Odd but interesting character(s) - take refuge from a hurricane - in a beat-up motel - and are forced to make a choice - between good or evil - in order to survive the night. - Each character must - have some history involving a supernatural event in their lives - that factors into their choice. - Genre is open. - This is a micro-budget short, - so no destruction of the motel, - no children or animals - and minimal special effects. - BONUS! Story also included: mime(s) - dinosaur(s) -
Right off the bat I can see this has way too much unnecessary description. You should tell us what matters and move along.
I believe the two women warrant capitalization just as A MAN IN WHITE does.
Telling us that there is a man and a woman naked and out of breath under the sheets feels a little sloppy. There are ways to get the point across with less words.
A wedding band hugs his left ring finger = he wears a wedding band.
You don't need to go crazy with the prose. Every once in a while it's good to add a little character, but too much and it bogs the read down to a halt and distracts from the story.
The "that" joke was a little cheesy to me, but I guess it could work for others.
Things just got even more improbably when the couple found dead and injured people and said things like "I think we should call the cops." Most people would be freaking out in that situation. They all look way too calm considering there is a dead body on the bed.
Overall, this story was not for me. Characters didn't seem to have their own voice as reactions to things always ended up surprising me.
The writing is clear, though way overwritten. You have talent with words, but you need to cut it down when editing your scripts. Thanks for submitting and congrats!
'Artist' is not a term you should use to refer to yourself. Let others, and your work, do it for you.
Well, this was a hard read due to overdescription. Cut, cut and cut some more. Every detail does not need to be explained, but I've only learnt this recently too. There is defenitley a nice little story in there some where.
The dialog dragged this script to a gringing halt. It's wordy and artificial and it just doesn't stop. The conversation when Misti and Dan meet Benny found out what happened in the room shouldn't have been more than a few lines. It seemed to go on forever.
Read your dialog aloud. You'll see how artificial it sounds.
If you tighten things up, the pagecount of this script could easily be half of what it is.
Yeah, so I wrote this. Sorry for the disappointment.
Most people just gave their honest opinions, saying they couldn't read the whole thing or found it confusing. That's cool. Your voices built the consensus, even if it was an unfavorable one and I appreciate that. But one or two of you beat a dead horse and then went after the owner. (Granted, some have apologized for that, which was cool and class.)
"I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called 'Max'."
No need to say you're sorry for your script being a disappointment. Everybody had hits and misses throughout their scripts. It's a learning process. I can't speak for you but I'm a newbie when it comes to writing and my OWC script had its fair criticism as well. Best thing to do is continue to write and it will eventually come to you and you'll look back at this script and laugh. I've read some of your reviews and you seem like an intelligent guy possiblly just starting out or maybe you were pressed for time. Anyways best of luck - Dirk
We all know that an OWC doesn't give much time for anything, especially fine tuning one's script. But, most of the time, the writer will post a response to the feedback and address certain issues, as in what he/she was thinking, what was a downright mistake and why it was made, or thanks for catching various mistakes that the writer didn't even realize were mistakes.
I'll admit I should've been more thankful for the mistakes that were pointed out by all. It was extremely useful and I'm an ingrate for not acknowledging something I had every intent of using in my rewrites. I didn't respond because I'd already submitted the script, people didn't really go for it, so I didn't think it was really worth defending at that point. What was done was done. Had my story actually worked and people just missed something that I'd hidden intentionally, I might've addressed that. But it was largely flawed, so I just thought I'd study all the notes and fix it later.
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For instance, you had a line in your script about a baby, and both Ray and I brought that up, saying, basically, "WTF?".
Yeah, that was a mistake. The old woman was a baby at first, until I was proofreading right before I submitted it and realized that a criterion was no children. I suppose I could've passed it off using a dummy baby prop and sound FX, but I wasn't sure how many people would think along those lines or if it could even work in the context of my script. So I swapped it with an old woman and, tried replacing all references to a baby with refs to the old woman. Thanks to you guys, you sniffed out a reference that I missed. Ergo, negative feedback +1.
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In Felipe's OWC, I (and I think another 1 or 2 peeps) mentioned that his main character was buttass nude the entire script. Felipe responded that he forgot and mentioned why he forgot, which was totally cool and understandable...No one likes getting negative feedback, but there are times (most times, actually) when negative feedback actually helps a whole Hell of alot more than glowing praise, when praise shouldn't be thrown out.
Oh, I'm cool with negative feedback. It keeps a body humble and it points out glaring mistakes that I miss--like the baby. I have no problem with that and I'm glad to get it.
The problem I have is that some people just go too far with giving negative feedback. A majority of the people who have shared their opinions on Room 3 were extremely civil and decent, even if a few of them didn't mention a single positive thing about my story. That's fine. I have no problem with those folks. They're what make this place a great resource.
What bugs me is when people get sarcastic and sour in their negative feedback for no reason. You and Ray did that. You owned up to it, so that's cool. I'm willing to let that go. But Ray insulted me, called me a redneck through a very disturbing pic, and seemed to disregard the fact that I'm also a writer who put a lot of work into a script. Why should I be cool with that? IMO, no one should be.
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Everyone makes mistakes. That's totally understandable. The problem is that mistakes are simply that - something that wasn't supposed to be written the way it was. The way you learn is when you find out things you didn't know or realize were actually mistakes.
I know.
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Feedback is meant to help, not hurt. Sometimes it doesn't come off that way, and I for one know damn well I could say things in a more positive way or be "softer" in my words.
And the fact that you acknowledge you could've been softer made your feedback softer, in my book. It was admirable that you took responsibility for that. I respect you even more now. I tried taking up my beef in private with Ray through a very civil and decent PM before I said anything publicly about it. I even gave Ray a few days to respond. When I didn't hear anything, I figured I was being ignored, so I didn't see any reason to hold back from returning the favor.
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Don't hate the reviewer unless what he or she says is complete horseshit, or downright incorrect. We're all trying to learn and help at the same time.
I know. I'm just not convinced that everyone else here realizes we're all in the same boat. If I give negative feedback, I always try to give some kind of brutally-kind encouragement to go with my brutal honesty. We're trying to build each other up here, after all. It's just frustrating that some people can't be bothered to adhere to that ideal. Rather than abide with the insults, I'm speaking up about them and standing up to the people that make them.
In summary, I like negative feedback that's constructive and doesn't get personal. When it gets personal, I get pissed because there's no excuse for it and it detracts from the quality of the community.
"I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called 'Max'."
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Room 3 - 10/12 OWC
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Will try to make one booked room look like both room 3 & 6 to save budget expense. Going to be kinda hard to see blood and sweat on a black Confederate flag T-shirt at night, juno? Set design is starting to drift off budget with room 3. You’ve pretty much killed the budget with casting.
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