Wow, Anthony, that turned dark, really fast.

I'm not sure how brave she'd be knowing what he's like when he's drunk.  I think she's be scared of him.

I thought it was really good, and a story of far too many people.  

You could have her rub old bruises for that one line about how she's covered up the bruises.

Other then that, it was damn near perfect.  Very solid.  Very troubling.

Dan

Steve/Marcela/Kia/Dan, thank you all for the reads, really appreciated.

To answer a couple of points... there has been one previous incident of domestic violence, so her reaction isn't the same who's been through it repeatedly, imho at least.

Yep, there is intentionally meant to be a juxtaposition in the darkness of the scene and the emoji's. It's one of the things that feels 'off' to me about emoji's in general, is that they only represent certain emotions, and also superficially but they are becoming important to the youth generation.

Anthony

Hey Anthony,

Unfortunately, I don't think you're gonna get much from me that you haven't gotten from others, so I'll keep this brief.

Solid premise with lots of present as well as potential conflict, but the tattoo is superficial and underused, despite its potential to singlehandedly drive the plot. I also think the domestic-violence twist was too abrupt, unrealistic, and honestly a little trite. There's plenty of scripts out there about this sorta thing; what are you bringing new to the table? I mean, there's the tattoo replicating Ben's emotions, but again, it's superficial.

I've got more, but honestly there's very little I could say that hasn't already been expressed, so I'd just say definitely take the time to read over all the comments again. I think there's a lot of good stuff here. I also think the amount of recurring issues in the feedback compared to individual gripes is indicative of a reasonably strong piece of work, at least going into rewriting. You should know what the issues are and have your work cut out for you, but at the same time, there's not a laundry list of other things to cover. Very cut and dry, it seems to me.

In any case, I'll leave you with another good-idea-but-the-execution-needs-work type sentiment and a "not bad." It's sincere, of course, but how cliche, right? Good luck on this one.

Thanks James, really appreciate the feedback.

Anthony

Quoted from AnthonyCawood To answer a couple of points... there has been one previous incident of domestic violence, so her reaction isn't the same who's been through it repeatedly, imho at least.

Viewers aren't going to be able to tell that he's only done it once before from her reaction. All they will see is bruises and a wife beater, plural.

Good point Dustin... there's no bruises though, they're just an aside... might change the dialogue to to indicate it... reference a 'one off' or similar.

Rather interesting and well written. An a novel idea to boot. Not often enough I get to say that, like the Vancouver thing the other day.

I could see most of this working well as a short film. It does seem to be missing something though. Perhaps another scene before he meets Kaitlin.

R

Anthony,

Always a pleasure to read your stuff. Well written and a nice, quick read.

I love the concept. You tell the story of domestic violence in a new and interesting way. The emoji changing its emotions throughout works well and would be a nice visual should this be made. I do think the ending, or the build up to it could use some work. There's no real punch to it at the moment. She stabs at him with with a nail file and it ends. Nothing wrong with what's going on but to end like that seemed a bit flat.

Great idea though and nicely written.

Good luck,

Glenn.

Ren/Glenn - Many thanks for the reads, appreciated as always...

Will have a look at the 'missing' thingy once I figure out what it is

Cheers

Anthony

I wasn't really sure where this one was going.

I couldn't tell if it was going to be lighthearted and fun, or sick and twisted.  At times it felt like both.

I'm at the point where I want more from my shorts than just an interesting scene.  I'm looking for something deeper.  Unfortunately this wasn't the latter.

It was well written and flowed, but it was lacking any depth.

Thanks for the read Nomad, really appreciated.

Hey Anthony

I' m going to take a different view to others and say this is sound.

I agree that a touch of foreshadowing may be required and the escalation has to be handled differently but this has something about it. A concept with punch.

I agree that a quick tidy up on the tonal shift may be helpful but I don't see it as the game changer that others do.

Domestic violence does have various roots, many scenarios that play out. And the victim will often stand up for themselves before it goes sideways. Often life has got back to normal before it kicks off again, but a sense of fear would be worth having out there.

In short, I think the early stages are easy fixes. But the idea of domestic violence seen through an emoji tattoo - really sound.

One option is to shift the total POV to him. Let see it through his eyes. Hard work. Banter at work. Quick decision on the tattoo. Laughter over pints. And then the arguments

Or...

They once got matching emoji tattoos. The argument is over something else. We then see inner emotions through the change in both of their tattoos.

Also tidy work.

This should be picked up

All the best

Hi Bill and thanks for the read, appreciated as always.

As you've noted this one seems to be fairly polarising

Current plan is to leave it a few weeks and come back to it with a little perspective and all the helpful comments.

Anthony

Anthony,

I took a shot at rewriting the first few pages of your script because I'm in a writing drought and your script inspired me to...do something.  Thank you for that.

Glad that it inspired you Nomad but I'm still working on this myself so wouldn't be right to read your pages.*

Hope it's helped with your drought and given you the spark to go write something new?

Anthony

*Assume you haven't put your pages up anywhere, wouldn't want authorship to get confused.