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The Couple Across the Street by Steve Meredith - Short, Drama, Crime - Paul and Kristin Baker live in an upper middle class neighborhood, and to their neighbors they appear to fit in quite well. No one knows that the Bakers are harboring a dangerous secret that they'll do anything to protect. One night, that secret is threatened when the Bakers' neighbor sees something she shouldn't. 13 pages
production: Designed to be a low-budget production, with a minimal number of locations, few characters, and heavily dialog driven. - pdf format
Format-wise I'll draw your attention to the fact quite a few of your scenes are not Continuous so you don’t need those in your sluglines.
Example: EXT. BAKER RESIDENCE – CONTINUOUS This scene would require a different location setup, so it’s not Continuous.
If I'm being pedantic you could also keep your description lines to succinct shots only and keep your action blocks to four lines. I'm not a stickler, but the extra info needs to add imho.
Example:
Lilly sees KRISTIN BAKER (33), Paul's wife taking their garbage can around to the side of their house.
Lily sees. Paul's wife. Not needed.
EXT. STEVENSON RESIDENCE - THE NEXT DAY Either write 'next day’ as a Super, or in description describe the sun coming up on a new day.
Kristin and Lilly enter the White's residence. A JOGGER in his early thirties sees Lilly and Kristin enter the house, and waves. Kristin quickly waves back and shuts the door.
The jogger is actually intrinsic to the plot (being a witness) considering Kristin later lies about the last time she saw Lily. Nothing is made of that later though, even perhaps in the police mentioning interviewing other residents.
INT. BAKER RESIDENCE DINING ROOM - LATER THAT NIGHT INT. BAKER RESIDENCE – DINING ROOM – NIGHT - LATER
KRISTIN It seems Lilly Stevenson saw you last night.
I'd personally make this line more definitive, even accusing. Cut the 'It seems' preamble.
...and realizing that her house is not soundproof... Just have Kristin lower her voice. That will show us all we need to know there.
A beat. Paul realizes that this could be the biggest problem they've ever faced. You're in the habit of 'telling' us way too much instead of ramping up the tension organically through a character's actions and demeanor.
Have him pace around, or fix himself a drink now not later is an option to up the drama naturally.
PAUL Okay, let's think through this. The bodies were cut up and placed in trash bags. So all she saw was me taking the trash bags out of the trunk, that's not so bad— That’s a lot of exposition and spelling out – all she saw – start at that point
He should/could be defensive here, perhaps even get angry: All she saw was... Spoon-feeding imho with the explicit mention of cut up bodies isn't needed. It's much more powerful to leave this to the audience's imagination. Most audiences would catch on. Alternatively, if you want to show more, perhaps have Kristin point to some blood on his shirt collar, that might be a nice touch, and it would point to his ongoing activities - she could accuse him of getting sloppy.
PAUL (CONT'D) How much of the vile did you use? Typo: Should be: Vial
The scene with how much poison she used also should promote an argument between the two - him turning on and blaming her. She did a stupid thing. I'd personally make more of this from his POV - the business end of this operation is his specifically, she clearly didn't know what she was doing, went behind his back and is now the cause of their predicament, and a lot worse, of being caught.
There's no way to link us to the causation of the victim's death. Unless the character speaks in a pompous manner I'd leave it as cause of death – sounds much more natural.
I like a lot of this. The use of poison, the ruthless actions were quite shocking and came from left field.
The ending however is an anticlimax and I feel wouldn't satisfy an audience considering the build up. You need to end on a bang or twist
Because of that it's not quite as self-contained as a Short (as it could be) and read more (to me, at least) as a teaser or opening to a longer piece.
I love the idea but I think you need to develop it more. In doing so you'd make it more Thriller than drama.
It's a terrific scenario. Nosy neighbours witnessing something they shouldn't is always a great hook for audiences.
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The Couple Across the Street
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