Ahoy Matthew, congratulations on finishing your script. Pardon my cynicism but reading this made me think you've only glanced at maybe a fragment of a screenplay and are guessing how to write.
I may have a story brewing, but it's coming off bad... It's totally not up to par with what you could be doing with it. The dialogue is tired, the tension is barely existent. I thought I would just not reply...but I see you need assistance.
I feel script writing is a lot like sculpture. You start off with a mound of clay, and begin to shape it. At first it's rough around the edges, but the more you remove and rearrange. Adding details etc... something begins to take shape.
The very beginning is empty of any visual imagery or richness. Your characters are nondescript right out of the gate - Chanti, Mr. Walderman, Paris. A generic room. A not described crash site. Paint us some images - this is SCREENwriting...
You need to use commas when you address someone. You almost always leave them out. To illustrate-
Um whats funny Mr.Tyler?
Thank You Colonel,
It should be:
Um, what’s funny, Mr.Tyler. You need that apostrophe between the T&S.
Thank you, Colonel.
Dr.camil age 37 white woman. Dr. Yugslov age 45 white man. Colonel watts age 42 a black man, ect...
Dr. CAMIL, 37, Dr. YUGSLOV, 45, Colonel WATTS, 42, and so forth.
In fact, just a lack of commas where needed through the rest of it, dialog, too, but I'm anal-retentive about punctuation. Among other things.
Also, you do realize it is customary to introduce characters using all caps.
Honestly, I feel like apologizing for lecturing you on this, but I would not even have mentioned it except for all the grammatical gotchas, and punctuation mistakes. Especially apostrophes. You had a few other issues, but I will not go into them. Maybe English isn't your first language.
My other issue with this is it’s not visual enough and there is way too much dialogue. Heck, describe the Alien. No need for me to do a further analysis. This needs polishing on tech merits and more pulse on story, even if Mother Theresa penned it.
Continuing with my sculpture metaphor, a few books on fundamentals, maybe Trottier, Field... although a bit dated. Or whatever. Also, there's links to sites crammed with free-for-educational-purposes screenplays. Read a lot of scripts that match your genre and see how they compare with yours. Then read another crapload just for the hell of it. Then throw away what you've posted here and rewrite it from scratch.
Bet you'll notice the difference. Bet we will, too. All the best
-A
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