Red Wedding by Little Sister - When a supervillain pulls the EARTH card, only the Cretes, long-time protectors of our planet, stand a chance at stopping her. - Short, Action

Hi writer,

That's quite a title page, holy crap! I'm not sure how I feel about you filling us in on a lot of your backstory on the title page. The rest of us have 5 pages to make a story work, you essentially have 6. The question is how much of the story will be lost if it wasn't there as none of this will be seen on screen, unless it was in a super, and then you'd blow the page count

This script looks really experimental. Cant say I'm a fan of the large bold text.

Quoted Text some sort of atmosphere

Not overly visual, not sure what you have in mind. Also the "we zoom" could be done better.

Quoted Text EXT. SPACE - DAY/NIGHT IRRELEVANT

At least your committed to this, but yes it is irrelevant considering it is in a slug and will never be seen by the audience.

Some of the transitioning through slugs is pretty awkward.

Quoted Text the lazier of them.

Impossible to know unless this is reinforced in dialogue or action.

Quoted Text Nightwatch rolls his eyes and whole head. Both gargoyles manifest into live form.

Not quite sure whats going on here.

Quoted Text as we see

Just not required.

Quoted Text Then our eyelids close shutting the light out.

I think you're trying too hard with this one.

Quoted Text twelve Saints sit as if they belonged there

Is there some way we would know they are saints?

Quoted Text A tail emerges Cinder’s train, dances about warming up low enough others don’t see it-yet.

This is some really awkward writing.

Quoted Text the human people

As opposed to?

For the lazy one, Nightwatch seems to be doing a fair bit of the heavy lifting.

Quoted Text QT-style

???? Quentin Tarantino?

Quoted Text All of the Cretes morph back into concrete sculptures. Echo and Ember turn into stone cherubs frozen along the ceiling.

Well that was easy.

So I'll commend you on trying something different, really, really different. None of it worked for me though. The story is hard to follow at best, and the writing isn't visual a lot of the time.

Not sure what else to say about it, a lot going on.

All the best.

Yeah this is an elaborate pisstake or at the very least a fusion of action/‘comedy. The writer knows his stuff but I’ll be marking it down.

I’ve read a few already and there are some good ones using the criteria well.  Will review more tomoz

Hello writer

What the monkeys is that title page? - I hope you didn't spend the whole weekend working on that rather than working on the story - I'm not reading the writing either, if it's relevant, it should be in the script.

Quoted Text Proxima Centauri, closest known exit planet to earth.

Is this supposed to be a SUPER? how else would we know this information - The font is pretty cool, although it's not the job of the writer and would only work if it was a SUPER - if it's just for the reader, it's pointless.

Quoted Text DAY/NIGHT IRRELEVANT

Not only is it wrong, it's pointless - you are forcing this a bit now. using these quirks to take us away from the story is probably not a great idea - think you might have had a bit too much fun with this lol

The font on Earth is pointless, that's not a super - too much, you just couldn't control yourself lol

Quoted Text the lazier of them

Show, show, show, show.... don't tell. screenwriting 101.

I have no idea what is happening

Quoted Text . Two lesbians enter

Really? don't make me say the S word again.

Quoted Text CINDER’S POV: The ceiling comes into focus. Out of focus. Then our eyelids close shutting the light out. ECHO crawls across the ceiling, stares down, then nods at EMBER who’s already crawling under the covers behind Barb. Ember’s tail whirls up gracefully. Hovers over the bed. Then repeatedly stabs Barb through the covers. Groans. Rapid breaths. And finally... Ember peeks out of the covers, nods at Echo. A drop of blood falls from Ember’s chin on Cinder. Her eyes open but not long enough to scream before Echo drops down crushing her scull against the headboard.

This screams rush job. First, you put us into a POV but don't take us back out of it - so the way you have it, we are watching all of this through Cinder's eyes - problem is, she closed her eyes - so now we are just watching a black screen.

The action is hard to follow - Echo is capped even though she has already been introduced.

Up until this point, it's been comedic - this scene seems a bit brutal.

Quoted Text A tail emerges Cinder’s train, dances about warming up low enough others don’t see it-yet.

erm, what? were you drinking when you wrote this? opioids maybe?

I don't understand the ending... who am I kidding, I don't understand any of it.

I'm sure you had fun writing this - but it's very convoluted.

I guess the only thing I have to say is... good try

I completely skipped over the title page.

The writing is all over the place. You're trying to force voice, but perhaps the writing is just not clean enough making it seem forced.

Code EXT. SPACE - DAY/NIGHT IRRELEVANT

You're correct, it is irrelevant. So irrelevant, in fact, that you don't need to mention it at all. You don't need EXT. either.

Another one that meanders and messes around. This is a 5-page action script. You don't have time for world-building... you hoping to score merit points for the attempt? Your bravery? It's weak. Annoyingly so. Action is meant to be fun.

Style wise a bridge too far for me. Sorry.

The title page is wasted here, even though you put a lot of work into it. You obviously trying to communicate something to the audience, similar to the scrolls at the beginning of the Star Wars films.  But that would properly be included as part of the script as a SUPER or INSERT.  That extra info would have put you over the page limit if included on the screen. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if you had it originally as part of the script and when you found you were running long, threw it on to the Title page. I ignored it for purposes of the grading, but just saying.

But it does lead into a second qualm, which is, you’re trying to world build for a world that doesn’t even exist. This is the second straight script where it turns out that the build up until the final page never even happened, and we’ve just invested our time in a script without the payoff. Not a fan of that.  

The writing is not bad at all, you met the elements of the challenge, if just barely, but the story itself was just okay for me. Wish you had actually finished it out to see where you went with it.

Best of luck,
Gary

Title Page: Whoa. I'm sure others will discuss thoroughly but curious as to the intent of the title page statement. Is this a SUPER or type of words on screen?

That was a chore. I really wanted to like this but I had to keep rereading to keep the characters focused. The humor didn't work (even though I'm an eighties kinda guy) and was unnecessary. The use of the odd font changing font was distracting too.

Sorry, it just wasn't my bag.

Two aliens come from a nearby star system to engage in a marriage, in the process murdering two innocent women. Just to get even with a gargoyle for an ancient slight. Thinking outside the box is great, but I don’t think it worked here.

Ode to Game Of Thrones, Red Wedding?

I see influences from QTs Kill Bill, and The Devil's Advocate too with the stone cherubs coming to life.

I notice you are a little comma/punctuation averse in parts which caused me to have to re-read a couple of lines:
A tail emerges Cinder’s train, dances
about warming up low enough others don’t see it-yet.

sores past.
soars past

I wasn't too fond of the Boy with the Pokemon card, and his comment at the end, only because it took me out of the fantasy feel of the world we were in, only to yank me back to another world reference.

It's lively and wild and experimental, with lots of gory action, so kudos on that.

Red Wedding

Oh, fancy title page…
fancy typeface in places…
capped dialogue, italics, underlining, cont'd, numbers in dialogue
zoom, insert, we, we see, our, pop-culture references

holy cow, did you leave anything out? ;-)

Okay, I start to read. May god help me…

Made it through. I think I get the overall plot, but I somehow believe you haven't taken it serious yourself. Well, then why in the world throw this kind of execution at us???  

It's so technical and convoluted, inefficient, while the important story-beats read rushed and unclear, without any flow. Sorry, as a critic, reviewer of screenplays, I must be clear here. That's not how I see our form of art and vessel of creating entertainment. Excuse moi.

Wow, tough crowd.  Bizarrely, I liked this, FWIW.  I love the little details. The lesbians... coupled with the fact it's quirky.  Not so much "smooth" as  a "well-lubricated," read.    But I’m not totally sure I got the story.   Seems you might be experimenting,  but clearly you can write, and I wouldn’t be surprised If you’ve had work produced.  I liked your music choices. (I love me some Billy Idol) "Rock the Cradle of Love." One of my favorites.

A coupla nit-picks, but none I care to share.  Best of luck!  

Quoted from ghost and_ghostie gal Wow, tough crowd.  Bizarrely, I liked this, FWIW.

Yeah, it's tough.

It didn't work for me. I'm happy when someone else sees it different though. I wanted but just couldn't connect here. The lesbians were the hosts for the aliens from Proxiplanet and the Gargoyles and Saint statues were the protectors of earth. This stuff is fanciful and inventive; however, imo; if you got a storyline that complicated and imaginative, then you should go the exact opposite route than directing the page and style that stringent.

Anyway, this might be better received as my own, so what? I don't think the writer wants and needs my pity :-)

Wow... this writer either had TOO MUCH WINE or played in the MUSHROOM patch!

Still... FUN time. And way out of the box.

This one is certainly inventive, but the story is all over the place and I lost what was going on really.

There is definitely action, a church is involved and there's a trading card of sorts, so marks for that.

Just wasn't for me.

Not much to add.

Kudos for experimenting. If you can't do that here, where can you do it?

I thought the stakes were bigger than they turned out to be. The protectors were really just protectors of the church, not the world. At least, I never got the sense that the world was in jeopardy, only the people in the church.

The final beat completely missed for me. I'm not exactly sure what happened.

I skipped the title page to get to the story, which was quite jarring to read.  The story was a bit over the place.  I wouldn’t recommend a rewrite.

Okay, there's nonstandard title pages, and then there's going off the deep end. Your Star Wars crawl does not belong there. Yikes, this continues right onto into the story.
Couldn't quite follow what Ember was doing in the girls' room, but this is a 72-hour first draft.
The term for finishing a scene from the sound of the next scene is called PRE-LAP.
Spell out numbers in dialogue as you'd have the actor say them. "Eighties" is obvious in context, but it should still be spelled out.
Having everyone freeze at the end was just strange. I'm sure it would make sense if you had more pages to tell your story, but as a closing image we're left to wonder who Ember couldn't use the card that way in the first place.