Fun script.  Kind of a mini From Dusk til Dawn scenario.  The script shows signs of having been rushed, such as the mini sluglines and a few typos here and there.

Some of the descriptions left me a tad baffled, like the part about 'laughter like golden rain' ...I don't know what that means personally.

I thought the parts with the bus driver went on longer than they needed to.

The ending left me confused (may have missed something during my read), but it was my interpretation that Sean willingly went into the loch with the Sith Queen, but then that raised the question of why was he fighting the Sith in the pub at all if he seems to be connected to them in some way (their lord as the Queen says)?

Overall though well done.

Hello. I'm getting around on scripts which I haven't commented on yet. Some things I put aside and questioned if it was worth commenting on, regardless of quality. Some I even re-read.

Quoted Text Each of the four has a different hair color - black, blonde, fiery red and brunette.

I'd go with auburn or albino. Brunette is black, isn't it?

Because of the lack of white space in between scenes, it appears too easy to forget slug locations. For example, INT. PUB -LATE AFTERNOON is fine; but BUS by itself isn't. It should be INT. BUS -SAME  because otherwise, the BUS is in the pub because you used it as a SUB-SLUG. It is like you are in a HOUSE (main location) and a scene happens in KITCHEN and the next in the BEDROOM. It is part of the same main location. The bus is outside of the pub; it isn't the same location.

You then switch back to PUB; but then we also go OUTSIDE or to the ROAD. EXT. PUB or EXT. ROAD or EXT. BUS would be best. This happens so much it's almost hard to follow where the action takes place.

Yes, it has a Dusk Til Dawn feel. So what? I seen a hundred horror movies and one and chances are there will be a hundred and one more with varied quality with this kind of setup. With the slug problem I was losing interest in this with each page; it felt rushed.

The beginning just too straight forward, almost easy for me.
They rise - and that's how we learn about them. Kenny walks towards them and gets in trouble. --I actually started thinking it's about Kenny.
When Duncan came into play.
He told us everything and his tellings were a bit on the nose.
They rose and wanted to take over the town and kill all.
Then there's a fight
And they loose
It's just too simple, I think.
Written very well, almost poetic and that's what I liked the most here.

Too many characters for me put a damper on the action, but this wasn't bad.

The opening left a lot to be desired.  The pub patrons also just came off as too average to me, especially since there's a bunch of them in such a short amount of pages.  It was a bit of a challenge for me to differentiate to be honest with you.

I liked the mythological stuff with the women/siths.  That was well done.

I just kinda wish this was tightened up and got more to the point quicker.  Otherwise, not bad.  Nice job.

Greg

Pros

Nice opening image.

Nice flow, nice pace. Draws you in.

Good authenticity. Felt real enough. The bar scene was solid. Others have mentioned Dusk till Dawn and I get that, also got the pub scene in American Werewolf...which is a good thing.

Like the seductive qualities of the Sith in their speech, but would like to see that developed more. Instead they just attack. Be good if you could make them more unique.

Duncan is a fun variant of the "harbinger of doom" type character, although...

Cons

...Duncan's rhetoric is overly expositional and gets tiresome.

It felt a little random. Be nice to see something actively set it off and whilst I liked the visual imagery of the ending, I didn't qute see how it fit in with what went on before.

Lose the bus. Adds nothing for the expense.


Overall good job. You've clearly got the knack for this kind of writing, just needs a bit of tidying up.

Still catching up... Stevie

This was a nice little short here, your ending was just okay for me... I thought the bar scene was pretty good.  Don't know if you'll go back and re-write this one, but I hope you do.  For a week, good job.

Good Luck,

Ghost

(-) What we have here is a well written, bit too descriptive script.  I use to write scripts packed full of details that didn't matter.  I'd have these absurd asides and clever ways of saying a 4 letter word, the whole gig.

After having some of those scripts critiqued professionally -- Getting back some pages chalk full of red marks and a butt hurt ass wallet I learned quickly it's in and out.  It's saying the most basic, most visual piece of the puzzle and moving on.  

You write extremely well -- But there are too many novel-like details in this script for me to really get a good rhythm going.  It's good, don't get me wrong.  

Stuff like

"Behind them, the oily waters of a large lake chop in the
breeze. The four stand perfectly still, their LAUGHTER
like golden rain."

"The sky overheard is packed with low, bruised cloud"


Just seems a bit too informative.  Also of note overHEAD is spelled wrong.  You have to take out the "R".  I know it's a simple mistake, so I just wanted to point it out if nobody else had.

Then there is the instance of this

"A well-weathered but neat establishment."

How about, and I'm not telling you; just suggesting to you

"An authentically weathered establishment."

I only say this because "BUT" inside action bricks make my nuts shrivel up a bit.

(+) I love how you introduce people into your scripts.  It's very fluid and clean.  There is almost no better way to do it than how you do it.  You give us the indicator, the person and the light details -- You then move on.  Bang up job throughout.

(on page 2 you have 2 dashes in dialogue which make no sense to me) <-- I don't know if they're suppose to be there or not, but if not remove them.  It's a small nothing of a problem, rather a pest if anything.

(-) I hate reading tightly formatted scripts -- I get that Trottier did it, and that's tops.  It is.  But he's really not very relevant today.  A spacious script is a much easier, less daunting read.  

I cannot stress spacing 1x after your FADE IN: & 1x after a scene has ended or you use a cut to or start a new scene.  Some people will say "Hey, if the script reads go for it!"  But to so many people I've talked to over the years, they see tight scripts as cluttered scripts.  They see them as "The scripts trying to say too much in as little time as possible".  

(+) I'm as white of a Jew as you can possibly get.  I don't know the dialect of how many Europeans speak or slang or any of that.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say you nailed a lot of how "I" perceive Scotts and Brits and whatnot to talk -- Not by much fist hand experience, rather exposure.  So a win column check by default.  It sounds authentic enough for me to believe in.

(-) There is a bit on page 4, pretty much all of page 4 and then again on 5 and maybe page 6 too -- Where you are using the location as a static slug.  These work often and I'm using them today in my own scripts, but I think how you're doing them could be tweaked just a bit.  

Reason being ... When I read  

PUB

some dialogue

ROAD

It is you jumping out of location and taking us to another location all together.  This would always be better handled with a slug and a scene change.  Now if you are in the scene, the same scene, you can use those more effectively.  This is just a suggestion.

(+) The story here, for 12 pages, is a work... It's got some substance, maybe not a MUST SEE, MEGA BLOCKBUSTER, but I could see it being something you'd see here or there.  It's not got the appeal to be on an anthology "Creepshow" or "Tales From The Crypt" type gig, but if longer and tuned up it could become something more than just an OWC script.  The sets are what killed this one -- The castle ruins and all that.  Yeah, pretty unfilmable on a minuscule budget.

Of note, I kept envisioning Jeff in this script.  Maybe it's because Jeff was in the script??

Very strong entry aside from all the criteria ins and outs.  I won't say it's worth revisiting in a longer version, but it could benefit from more pages and time.  Easily.

Though this had a pretty eerie feel to it and you dun good at telling a serious story stevie, I think it seemed too serious, overly serious, and you really needed to lighten it up a bit.   There's no reason you can't tell a serious story with a lighter touch.  

Because it was so serious I had a difficult time relating to it.  If it wasn't your script I would have put it down at the point where their laughter was like golden rain.  If not there then after the first page.  

Also there was a lot of exposition here.  If you had shown us the story rather than treating it as a lecture on the Baobhan Sith it could have been so much more exciting.  You could have played up on the Aussie encountering a mystical creature.  Think how brilliant that could be.  We both know Aussies aren't a superstitious lot.    

Between the exposition and the seriousness I really had trouble feeling involved in the story.  Sorry.  I think you need to rethink what story you are telling and how you are telling it. As a mattter of fact instead of telling it to us make us live it.

Hope that helps.

Bus could become a taxi (aka ANY car).  You eliminate the cost, still get all the effects you were going for, plus it gives you more of a cramped, claustrophobic feel than the openess of a bus.  

Duncan's dialogue needs to be more realistic.  As it is, he sounds like he's reading the "rules" of the creatures off of a checklist.  Why do the creatures attack this particular pub?  Was this just the first building they happened to pass after coming from wence they came or was there a reason?  I thought it might be that they were after Sean, but they didn't seem to know or care who he was.

This was a good read, made for a nice survivalist horror piece.  The ending feels tacked on (maybe rushed due to time and page constraints) and doesn't seem to mesh with the rest of the story.  I think it needs more explanation somehow.

Thanks to all who read this, and thanks for some really good ideas, if I re-write it (i'm not a big re-writer, have only done it once, but we'll see what happens)

Some BG into Bloodstorm: i was excited about the challenge requirements and wanted to do something Scottish, to tie in with one of my ancestry lines.
The Baobhan Sith stood out immediately - seductive hornbag vampires luring in Scotland - full on shit!! (Actually, I only just realised Sith is an anagram of shit...and Lucas must've stolen the name for Star Wars too?)

Originally i was gonna set it along the West Highland Way and the Sith were 4 gorgeous backpackers. They were gonna seduce and dance with guys at a pub then start killing them. I might use this still, as an alternate version, but I wanted to involve my ancestral home at Invergarry.

The first draft I left gaps for the exposition and the ending, then filled in later. I wanted to have Kenny call Alex on his mobile, to report the 'accident' and the crew in the pub would hear his death over the phone loudspeaker. But I prefereed the quick cuts in that scene, flipping back and forth.
I knew I'd cop flak about the 'mini slugs' - though some readers didn't even mention it- i was just trying for some freshness in my writing. I've been putting in some unfilmables laterly, instead of the same boring stuff.
If this scene came over hard to read, I apologise - I was looking at it if it was filmed and it would be quick cuts between the locations. I spent a lot of time writing this scene, it was like a jigsaw puzzle at times.

Duncan does exposite a bit too much - that was filled in later. I would like to have expanded on his battle with the Sith when he was a kid - a flashback - but the page count was getting up.
The action scenes got out of control a bit, simply because I'm not that expereinced with writing them!!! I tried to make the Sith these cool deatched sort of nasties.

A few people have thought that Donna was a Sith the whole time, but she only gets turned when hit by Raven. I didn't want to telegraph it so it wouldnt spoil the bit where she kils Dunc. Ditto, with Sean not been revealed as a McDonell till near the end.

The ending? Yeah, I was gonna just have Sean and Jeff stagger out of the pub, with an aerial shot. but I wanted to show the old castle so Sean heads there. It was meant to be this dreamy link to his past - Dunc mentions earlier that the Glengarry lords paid homage to the Sith; maybe I should have written consorted with or even interbred!!

Sean was gonna hear the voice and a hand would pull him into the loch but it sounded odd. So I went with the Sith Queen embracing him back - actually it was all vague to me so I left it??!! Sorry!

The title? Last second job as i submitted it!  Spent a day thinking of something cool and short. I even checked out a fantasy name generator. One came up that I liked - 'Memory's Women' - which I liked but my wife said it was stupid!! Should've nabbed it!!

Ok, better go. I had planned to write more but didn't want to bore you all!  Here's a pic of the old castle at Loch Oich at Invergarry, my ancestral home. Our motto is the Raven on the Rock, the castle was called 'The Raven's Rock.

If I haven't reviewed anyone's script - I did most of them - feel free to PM me and i will

Cheers stevie - Steve McDonell, 19th Lord of Glengarry





PS - I'm wearing a t-shirt form Gettysburg battlefield which I left in the bed and breakfast we stayed in here - fucking spewing!!

Lord Steve, I want a pic of the babe, Raven, not your bloody arse, you old goat!!!!!!

The problem with this script, IMHO, is that it was rushed.  If you took another week or two, Stevie, and wrote another draft, you would have a good story on your hands.

The descriptions could be tightened up.  You have a lot of orphans, here, which could be eliminated.  Your first scene's description:

Quoted Text In a clearing, four YOUNG WOMEN stand in a circle. They wear white dresses, and slowly bring their hands up, touching to form a peak. Each of the four has a different hair color - black, blonde, fiery red and brunette. Behind them, the oily waters of a large lake chop in the breeze. The four stand perfectly still, their LAUGHTER like golden rain.

Could be cut down to:

Quoted Text FOUR BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMEN stand in a circle, near a loch.  Their flowing white gowns flutter in the wind.  They raise their hands in unison and gently laugh.

Hair color isn't important, here.  Sure, it makes a nice visual.  But it's not needed.

Whenever you have a paragraph of description or dialogue, and the last line consists of only a word or two on the page, find some words to get rid of.  Examples from the first page alone:

In the fourth paragraph, you use up an entire line on the page with the word shoulder.  If you delete the opening words Then, one by one, the orphan disappears.

The last paragraph on page one (where Sean leaves the bus), an entire line is wasted on a 49ers cap.  If you delete the words medium-sized (an unnecessary description for the backpack), the orphan disappears.

If you tighten up the script, you can probably take two pages out of this script.

Pages two through five were a bit disorienting for me.  You bounced around way to much here.  Completely unnecessary!  Oh, and use full headers.  It makes for an easier read.

The story, itself, came off as a basic vampire tale.  If not for Duncan's on-the-nose explanation of things, this story could have easily been set anywhere in the world.  This isn't a bad thing, mind you.  You told us who the Baobhan Sith were, instead of showing us.

I had a problem with Sean's backstory.  It was too much of a plot device.

Your storytelling was good, though.  I did like that, over all.  You got a lot of story into twelve pages and it was nicely paced.  Cut back on the characters next time.  You had, like, a dozen of them in this story.


Phil

Understand where you're coming from with the cuts Phil, but sometimes when I see the suggestions people make in this regard it seems like a totally different scene.

I got a sense of the scene and the timing with Stevie's, whereas with your suggestion it was more of a quick establishing shot.

Hi Phil. Thanks for the read and valuable comments!

Yeah, it was a bit rushed this. Some parts i wrote later, slotting them in - this is why Duncan's exposition sits a little uneasy in there.

I like your points about cutting some wrods to reduce the lines - I nearly did erase the full description of Sean(who is actually me at a younger age, hence the 49ers cap) and see now I should've.
The Sith's hair colour I was using as a future guide to who was who - only Raven was going to speak, I didn't want to have SITH 1 or 2 in the script, and i didn't want to give them proper names either. So the hair was my way of tracking them.

Yeah, the non-slug scenes - as I explained futher up the thread, I was going for how it look in a film - trying to be arty as well - and used them to show the quick cuts and make it more sort of effective.

Sean's backstory? Yeah, i was trying to keep it hidden till the end, so the way the Sith would be defeated wasn't revealed. I thought it and Donna's turning would have more impact that way.

Rick, in your last comment, is that what you mean in reply to Phil? You are referring to the non-slugs?

I was on about his advice to cut the opening scene down.