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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    One Week Challenge    September 2011 One Week Challenge  ›  Looney, Silly Day - OWC Moderators: Don
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  Author    Looney, Silly Day - OWC  (currently 3211 views)
Don
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 10:50am Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Looney, Silly Day by He - Short -  A lone survivor in a post apocalyptic world must battle unseen forces in order to survive. 7 pages - pdf, format


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Dreamscale
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 12:12pm Report to Moderator
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Good attempt at misdirection and a decent ending are not nearly enough to save this script, sorry to say.

The writing is atrocious in just about every way conceivable.  Punctuation, grammar, sentence structure, extremely awkward phrasing to the point of coming off like a pisser at times, passive writing, horrible Slugs, useless, deceiving SUPER, crazy amount of V.O., complete lack of apostrophes...oh man...that's probably enough already.

IMO, in no way is this one location - I think you could make it so that it is one location, but lots of changes would have to go down, especially with your extremely poorly written Slugs.

I was hating the read until the twist was revealed (which i enjoyed to a certain extent), but again, based on the incredibly poor execution on display, there's no saving grace here.  Clean this baby up.  Make it more realistic, more menacing, and you've got a decent script on your hands.  It needs ALOT of work, though to get to that point.

Congrats on completing an OWC entry.
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crookedowl
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 12:18pm Report to Moderator
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I wrote down every mistake I caught, and by the time I made it to page four I didn't want to read much further. It seemed to drag, in my opinion.

-JOHN (V.O)
Its just like the other cities!
Nothings left.

"It's" and "Nothing's"

-JOHN (V.O)
Oh my God, My life is over!

Either don't capitalize the "M" in "My," or use a period instead of a comma.

-Get rid of (CONTINUED) on the tops and bottoms of page. It's unnecessary..

-EXT. HOUSE
John stands in front of a house. It might have been a nice
house once, but its been reduced to nothing more than a
shack. He wearily scans it for a moment then enters.

Instead of that, why not just say “EXT. SHACK”?


Pg. 2

-EXT. OUTSIDE – NIGHT

Outside what? If you say "EXT." we know it's outside. Where are we?

-"But the memory is fuzzy and John cant make out what it is."

"Can't"

-John hears a disembodied voice saying Take it! Take it!

Do this:

          DIMEMBODIED VOICE
   Take it! Take it!


-JOHN (V.O)
Mutants! Or the military!

This seemed cheesy to me.

Pg. 3

-He picks up a piece of pipe that’s lying on the ground

If it's an inanimate object, say "laying" not "lying." It's also passive verbiage, anyway, so say "that lays on the ground" instead.

-Again John is standing with two other men.

Passive verbiage again. Use "Again John stands with two other men."

-Its like he wants John to take something from him.

"It's"

-It looks like the mans lips read "Take it!"

"man's."

Also, if you just see a character's lips move, I think there's a certain way you have to write it, although I can't remember it.
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leitskev
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 12:52pm Report to Moderator
Of The Ancients


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Must've been some good acid, man! Or dude. That's why I stick to shots and beers.

At the beginning, when you say we're looking at ruins, it would help if you say ruins of what. Don't assume we know it's a city.

There are major format violations everywhere. No big deal, just keep posting shorts here and working on that, you'll pick it up quick.

Would there be a super in what amounts to a dream sequence? Personally,  I dream in colors, but not in supers. Not yet.

In that opening line I couldn't help seeing Charlton Heston and the torch from the statue of liberty.

He says LA burning and New York. I guess anything's possible since it's a dream, but at the time I was thinking how does he know both are burning. Did he see both? Long walk.

I thought the figures were odd, especially with their dialogue, which seemed cartoonish, but now that this turns out to have been an acid dream, I am completely confused. The shots with the figures seemed to happen from their perspective, without John being aware of them. How can this happen in John's dream?

Obviously this is early work for the writer. You have a good imagination, keep plugging away and participating on the boards, it'll come together for you.

Revision History (1 edits)
leitskev  -  September 19th, 2011, 10:50am
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grademan
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 3:07pm Report to Moderator
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I enjoyed the initial sci-fi aspect of this, even FIGURE #1 and FIGURE #2 didn’t bug me. Then it turned to the junkyard on October 31 (duh read the super) and I was disappointed the script ended on the dreaded... it was all an acid trip.

The writing was overdone in places. Sometimes a shack is a shack not “It might have been a nice house once, but its been reduced to nothing more than a shack.”

Must have been fun to write!
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Ryan1
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 3:46pm Report to Moderator
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At first, I thought this script was a disaster.  Formatting, grammar errors abound.  Cheesy, unbelievable dialogue.  Standard post-apocalyptic smoldering ruins stuff.  Also didn't seem low budget to me at all.

But the acid was a funny twist.  The ridicuous dialogue:

JOHN (V.O)
Mutants! Or the military!

Now seems awesomely funny.  And the bizarre images make a strange kind of sense as they're being seen by a completely warped mind.

But when John "snapped out" of his trip, the acid could no longer explain this dialogue:

JOHN
You crazy fuckers! You did it
didn’t you? You ruined my life!
Damn you! My whole worlds burning!

And I'm not sure who called the cops.  So, the ending was a little disappointing, but the twist made this worth it.
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Reef Dreamer
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 5:17pm Report to Moderator
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A few thoughts;

# yeah, a crazy ride that's for sure, so well done for something a bit wacky
# I agree about the writing etc a bit to clean up
# junk yard, fancy dress, acid - humm. Maybe a bit much for me to buy into

You know what, it's a rough diamond but had something a bit different, even if I didn't fully get into it.

All the best.


My scripts  HERE

The Elevator Most Belonging To Alice - Semi Final Bluecat, Runner Up Nashville
Inner Journey - Page Awards Finalist - Bluecat semi final
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mcornetto
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 6:07pm Report to Moderator
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Someone was watching too many Charlton Heston movies synched up to Pink Floyd.

It was pretty good, especially for a week.  But I thought you really stretched the one location limitation - too far IMHO.

There was one thing that really got on my nerves though.

The same man wants to give John something. He holds out his
hand to john. John takes something and brings it up to his
mouth.

We can see what he's doing - something isn't some thing it's some described thing.  Just say he's taking a pill.  We know that anyway.

I wasn't crazy about the ending but I suppose there really wasn't a lot of places you could go from the corner you put yourself in.

And you should have waited until the October OWC to submit this.

SUPERIMPOSE: OCTOBER 31, YEAR UNKNOWN

The October scripts are usually supposed to happen on Halloween.

Good work for a week.


  
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Sandra Elstree.
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 6:40pm Report to Moderator
Of The Ancients


What if the Hokey Pokey, IS what it's all about?

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This is the kind of thing that may make many readers upset. Why? Because it's kind of like a "Ha-ha, fooled you." Even the logline itself does not tell what the story is about; so you've tricked your readers into believing one thing and then at the end, tell them basically that you were joking. Not cool. Even if you didn't mean to do this, that's the way it comes off. Try and figure out a way to change it so that we learn earlier on what's going on.

Sandra



A known mistake is better than an unknown truth.
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Electric Dreamer
Posted: September 17th, 2011, 10:20pm Report to Moderator
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Taking a long vacation from the holidays.

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Smoldering suburban ruins don’t seem budget friendly to me.
I didn’t understand why the calendar elicited that emotion.
When you said “humongous” I was thinking much bigger.
Format and grammar issues hamper the read.
I think the critter quotient blew the budget here.
The reveal at the end helped give some context.
Ambitious for a week, I’d like to see a better draft.

Regards,
E.D.


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Grandma Bear
Posted: September 18th, 2011, 9:50am Report to Moderator
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While I was reading I must admit that I was bored. It seemed so old hat and cliche. Then when the reveal came I liked it much better. Good idea here that I liked, but you must fix what happens before the reveal. It drags and is not interesting.

What on earth does John mean in the slug? Slugs are meant to tell you if we are inside or outside and what location the scene takes place and what time. Night or Day.

Definitely not low budget.

All in all, good idea that needs better telling.  Good luck.


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SLM
Posted: September 18th, 2011, 10:27am Report to Moderator
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I have to agree with Pia. Just not very interesting, and the end twist wasn't good enough to rescue it. It was like a really bad episode of The Twilight Zone!

If he had killed, say, his family - wife and kids - and then at the end it was revealed that he had been on a drug without his knowing it after a government experiment to see how people would react to an nuclear war, or something like that, then it would have worked much better -

as it was it felt like a wasted opportunity. And the end was so clearly nicked from PotA that, while it may have been intentional, it had the unfortunate affect of underlining this script's weakness.
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c m hall
Posted: September 18th, 2011, 5:54pm Report to Moderator
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This reads like an early draft but I think it could be hammered out into a good story.  Could be visually interesting.
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dogglebe
Posted: September 18th, 2011, 7:55pm Report to Moderator
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While I think the story is good, the execution left a lot to be desired.  It was a little confusing and overly-written.  Some things were underplayed.  The humongous spider should've been a humongous spider.

John's dialog was over-the-top and forced, IMHO.  Kevin mentioned Charlton Heston; it was an accurate (and humorous) comment.

The twist at the end was nice.

As far as the guidelines for the OWC, you missed the mark.  You have three locations (as opposed to one) and this piece is definitely not low budget.  I might go assofar as to suggest that this script was written prior to the OWC.


Phil
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darrentomalin
Posted: September 19th, 2011, 10:47am Report to Moderator
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I had to read this a few times because I didn't know if I liked it. I still don't. I liked parts of it - the idea is great but the execution fails. Like others have said, your writing will only get better.
Some of the descriptions were good and atmospheric (though some trimming is required)
I didn't like the twist - guys in masks, Meh. The acid trip seemed too real rather than surreal, as if they knew what trip he was going to have before they took the drug. Their dialogue during the reveal feels rushed and unrealistic (the most difficult aspect of writing IMO).
Biggest problem - most definitely more than one location.
Daz


http://darrentomalin.webs.com/index.htm

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