Mercury by Dan Chant - Action - Deep in the heart of Los Angeles an upcoming presidential candidate has been kidnapped and taken to a company responsible for the design of the Mercury Chip, a chipset favoured by military and government operations.  The police, organised by Chief Mike Irons, mount their rescue with snipers on nearby buildings and send in an experienced S.W.A.T. team, led by Lenar Clark, to do the job on foot. The other members, Rachelle, Joseph, Greg, Marc, Peter and rookie Chris organize their assault as they prepare to rescue the senator from the clutches of the terrorists but, when they enter the building and begin their mission, the discover the building is hiding more than just technological secrets… - pdf, format

Beautiful screenplay. The characters have a certain depth about them, I enjoyed this screenplay so much. Great work, the flow of the text and the structure of the story blends nice. Hope to see more of your work on here soon. Congrats on this piece of work.

Thanks, guys.

You're very kind and I'm honestly really happy that you enjoyed the screenplay, I'm afraid that some of the formatting went awry when I transferred it through Final Draft (something I am sorting out now so expect a revised version shortly!) so I hope that didn't affect your enjoyment of the screenplay.

As for whether I post, yes, I do. Well, I do now. This is both my first post and my first screenplay so I'm pretty new to the whole situation but I am hoping to be reasonably prolific with regards to submitting work. I have several pieces nearing completion so, if you enjoyed this one, please check out my later submissions and let me know what you think.

I welcome constructive criticism from all corners and would love to know what you all think worked and what you think didn't (then I can incorporate these comments into a future revision!). So, any wannabe Creative Executives, please chime in with your thoughts! Hahaha!

Thanks again guys and I hope we have the chance to chat somewhen in the future.

All the best.

Dan

Dan,

I've been skimming your script and it's got me interested...and the only suggestions I have so far have nothing to do with the story, which is a good thing...

• Numbering your scenes isn't really necessary, seeing as how (I assume...?) this isn't a shooting script.  If this is, then by all means keep them, but if you're planning on sending this out to production companies/contests/etc., then scene numbers are pretty much unneeded.

• This script has a lot of camera direction (nothing wrong with that).  I usually try to come up with a way to imply it rather than state it outright.  From what I can see, every "ANGLE" minislug could be easily changed to accomplish this.  For example, from page 8...

Quoted Text ANGLE ON: RACHELLE GARCIA - She is sitting opposite Joseph and Greg. She has a look of seriousness on her that is only given away by a small smirk. Although years of hard work show through she still hasn't lost it. ... ANGLE ON: CHRIS LEYLAND - The youngest of the team at 27 and it shows. He has a small goatee beard and a S.W.A.T. baseball cap turned backwards. His face is covered with eagerness and excitement, he loves this stuff.

...could become something like...

Quoted Text RACHELLE GARCIA sits opposite Joseph and Greg. She has a look of seriousness on her that is only given away by a small smirk. Although years of hard work show through she still hasn't lost it. ... CHRIS LEYLAND is the youngest of the team at 27 and it shows. He has a small goatee beard and a S.W.A.T. baseball cap turned backwards. His face is covered with eagerness and excitement, he loves this stuff.

...and your direction remains intact.  

I also spotted a few spelling/grammar errors, but nothing that serious -- one revision and they're gone.  When I get through with the script, I'll be sure to provide more in-depth critique.  Thanks for posting this; I'm pretty engrossed!

Ah, thanks for the input there. That's honestly really helpful. The script was kind of a rush job, there was an idea and I kind of just rolled with it as I went along. I'll admit that it is pretty rough around the edges, grammar and spelling most certainly need a polish (that's what I get for writing at 3 in the morning I guess!) and, as for the scene numbers, the draft I'm editing at the moment has them removed.

Like I said in my earlier post, I'm pretty new to this gig and it's a learning process whose curve can be both gentle and steep. Right now, it's relatively steep as I'm now "taking out the trash" of the script (it's a pretty heavy read and needs streamlining in my opinion).

But your advice is both welcome and encouraged. It's nice to have somebody who understands the medium offer an intelligent critique, it's something I've been needing! Any further advice and so on please post/let me know so that I can take your comments on board.

Thanks once again.

All the best.

Not to take anything away from JBM, but if you aren't writing this for a production company who requested, and this is more or less a script you wrote that you might pitch, then you need to use what is know as spec format, which is standard screenwriting format, but completely devoid of camera directions and scene numbers. The idea here is to simply tell the story without the distractions of what the camera is doing or telling "us" what "we're" seeing. Just throwing that out there...

Thanks, George. The script, in its current state, is little more than a raw idea. As I mentioned in my previous post it needs a polish but, at least to me, I think there's some potential to make it an enjoyable action film with some thematic elements which, while arguably basic, are relatively complimentary to its genre.

What I want to do is to take this idea (the rough notes) and water them down into a final, readable and solid piece of work. Comments like yours and those of the others kind enough to contribute their opinions (a big thanks guys) help me learn and grow and, therefore, the more the better.