Yesssssssssss.... cannot wait to hear the progress on this one and eventually read the feature.


Good luck, bud.

ONEY

Congrats Jordan,

The storyboards looks great. Very cool. Can't wait to read the script when you finish.

Good luck,

Dirk

Geezus Jordan--those are freakin' awesome.  Best of luck on bringing this to completion!

Hello Jordan

First time reader. Got to read this out of curiosity. I like this but, as some have pointed out, it reads more of an opener than a short. Definitely expand this into a feature since this is something interesting to explore.

Can't wait to read the feature.

Gabe

Thanks for the encouragement everyone.  I'll keep you posted as I go.

Jordan

Hey Jordan, the storyboard looks fantastic, he's done a grand job there.  
I remember this short, and I remember it being pretty cool.  It will be interesting to see how you develop it in to a feature too.

Hey Jordan,

Love the quality and enthusiasm here.
Looking forward to exploring that dangerously nifty world.
Heck, I even lined up another feature producer request for it today!

Onward into the next great adventure!

Regards,
E.D.

Hey Jordan, impressed with that.

Best of luck.

Jordan

This was a solid little piece, nothing we haven’t seen before but it works as an attention grabbing, effective eight pager nonetheless.

Your writing is good for the most part however I found when the suspense and tension levels rose as the beast began to pick off each person, some of your phrasing and word choice to convey thes events suffered a little. Not sharp and punchy enough to depict the racketing up of events, instead becoming rather clumsy and laboured. For example:

“Billy holds on to the lower railing with a death grip.”

- Could be punched up by phrasing it as something like:

“Billy, frantic, grips the railing, hangs on precariously.

“Shawn stands in the middle of the bridge, looking in all
directions for Mark and Katie.”

- Reads a bit awkwardly, how about less padding and more relevant and visual description i.e. Shawn’s facial expression. Such as:

“Shawn stands frozen, breathing quickened. His eyes dart in all directions,”
I like how you don’t reveal the monster until the right time giving us little clues like the metallic “TINK TINK TINK” and metallic hands reaching through the decking, had me engaged and wondering what the hell was under there.

“Shawn stands up.”

“He looks down through the metal deck and sees a dozen shadows
moving around.”

- Maybe it’s just me but after what’s just happened I would be freaking the fu?k out! Shawn on the under hand seems relatively together with his wits about him after the ordeal. Again, I would include a facial expression or some indication of body language to highlight Shawn’s reaction to the situation. As its written he appears to just stand up, say a very coherent line without any difficulty and look through the bridge out of curiosity. Once again, if it were me I would be losing my sh?t big time and not hanging around to find out what’s under this bridge.

"Their claws shimmer in the moonlight like deadly
diamonds strewn all over the road."

- Good description.

To your credit, besides the lack of references to Shawn’s expressions the writing does work better when the creatures begin to bear down on him and he has to make a run for it, the feet-to-go countdown is a nice touch. The action lines flow better as you seem to get a firm grip on how to accurately and succinctly depict the increasingly perilous situation for Shawn.

Pretty graphic ending you got there with the gory details of the damage inflicted by the creatures on Shawn. For a moment there I thought he was gonna escape since he had taken all the slack from Billy earlier but no you ruthlessly kill him off too!

Overall, not a bad effort if a tad pointless; Group of four get a flat tire over a bridge, monster lurking underneath proceed to kill them all one by one, not much left for interpretation, not that this is mandatory in all scripts and as an action filled short with lots of blood and danger hiding beyond the shadows it works well.

Col.

Thanks for the review Col.  I really appreciate it and I agree that this needs to be rewritten.  

You're absolutely correct with the writing not being punchy enough.  I like some of your choices, but "Precariously" may be a bit much, though I definitely like the direction you took it.

I'm in the process of fleshing this out to a feature.  I'll keep you posted.

Jordan

Hey Jordan,

Nice little piece you've written there.

To me this reads like an opening sequence, and if you plan on adding to it, would benifit greatly from trimming it down to bare essentials. e.g. cut all dialouge for effect, maybe have them in the car to start with, radio cuts in and out, car heater stops working etc etc. bring in more emotion for the characters and concentrate on ambience and setting the scene.

In its current form you have done a good job in building tension and here are a couple of points that in my view just let it down a bit.

elaberate a little more a rusted bridge - in my mind the rusted part was just the framework and not the decking. its not until page 5 we learn its a metal deck.

Page 1 - MARK and KATIE ,  move the comma back a space.

you should only need the one slugline - EXT. BRIDGE - NIGHT, you can set which part of the bridge someone is on during the action lines.

when kate gets ripped over the side in the background we don't know by what?  Same with Billy, if something is yanking them over we need see what.

100' away? is this feet or meters?we dont find out until a page later , also if you can't see a number on screen spell it out.

As stated earlier this would be a great opener and because this is how i've viewed it I really want to know what happens next- so welldone on creating a piece that encourages a reader to keep going.

Good luck with whatever you end up doing with this script and I look forward to reading other works from yourself.

Thanks for the review, trickyb.  This is definitely an opening sequence.  

I agree that it can be trimmed down a lot.  I loathe reading my older work and seeing places where I should have cleaned it up.

I think you're right about elaborating on the bridge.  It's the main character in this sequence, so I should give it the description it deserves.

I don't want to show exactly what rips Katie and Billy over the side because I don't want to reveal the creature until the right moment.

The whole "100' " thing is an amateur mistake on my part.  It should have been, "one hundred feet" or "100 feet"

I'm happy that you want to know what happens next.  That means I'm doing something right.

If you have any scripts you'd like me to review, feel free to send them my way.

Jordan

Quoted from Nomad "Precariously" may be a bit much,

- Really, would you not classify hanging off a bridge that houses bloodthirsty, otherworldly beasts underneath to be a fairly precarious situation!

Col, I think that the word "precariously" is perfect to describe the situation, it just doesn't flow with the other words you used.

Fair enough